The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Spring 2002

Week 17: Look at My Control

5-12-2002

After the last meeting of IV, I went to Wheeler to watch Amelie but it was massively sold out, with huge extensions of lines turned away. The whole family picked me up and I moved a bunch of stuff back.

I slept in on Saturday morning. Nothing really special; then I went to worship practice, where only Troy showed up. It was kind of hard to keep everything together without a drummer or anyone else. After practicing, I talked with Troy for a while about conservatism and liberalism, and how people of the latter are severely deluded. Cell group was at Morgan’s house and was a riot, as usual.

Ralph wasn’t here today, he was on vacation, so Cindy was in charge of the service, Jonny was doing the sermon, and I was doing worship. The worship, thankfully, sounded really good with all the instruments together, and every song came out great... ones that come to mind are my gothic rendition of “In the Secret” and our traditional, harmonic presentation of “Seek Ye First.” All the other songs were nice as well.

Something bothered me at church. Right after I wrapped up the response worship and the service ended, this newcomer guy came up to me (he was Wally’s friend; “Ignore this guy, he’s just going to be an ass,” he told me) and asked, “Why do you sing the second part of that song?” (referring to “Create In Me,” which Jonny requested because it was directly related to his sermon on dating and things of that nature) which quotes, directly from Psalm 51 (KJV), “Cast me not away from thy presence, O Lord, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”

“Because it’s in the song,” I said.

“So that means that if the song said ‘I worship Satan,’ you would sing it?”

“No,” I said, “but this is from the Bible.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean anything. Are you saying that God can take his Holy Spirit from us? So we’re singing a song that’s essentially a meaningless prayer.”

“No,” I said, “this is David’s prayer, and we pray the same prayer because we are sinners and we ask the same thing of God.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Every word in the Bible is meaningful and applicable to us,” I said.

“It was applicable to David, but it doesn’t apply to us.”

It was around this time that I started to get agitated by this dude’s stupidity.

“So are you saying that the Old Testament is nullified? We don’t need the Old Testament anymore?”

“Yes. It is nullified.”

“No,” I said, extremely annoyed. “It isn’t nullified. Jesus said himself that he didn’t come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.”

“Yes, but he can’t take away the Holy Spirit from us, or you’re in essence saying that someone can lose their salvation.”

“Well, I don’t know that, and you don’t know that either. God is always with us, but he can take his presence from us. If you live in sin and fall away from God, his presence will leave you. He says that if we draw near to him, he will draw near to us. It’s a mutual thing; you can walk in the Spirit, or you can not.”

“Yes, but that’s not the same thing as taking his Spirit from us.”

“Look,” I said, tired of the shit, “this is what David prayed in the psalm, and we can pray it too. The Bible is applicable to everyone at all times.”

At that time I was fortunately interrupted by Tiffany, who apologized for not being able to make the worship practices, and that freed me from that idiotic fellow’s rantings. This guy was saved, right? I’m a fellow believer, a brother in Christ! Instead of encouraging me, he comes to me, a complete stranger, and goes straight into a theological argument! Doesn’t this guy have anything better to do than to pick disputes with other Christians over some worship songs (based directly on Scripture, I might add). The word of the Lord is living and accurate, and useful for all kinds of teaching, rebuking, etc. Why doesn’t he use is “intellectual” prowess to go out and win unbelievers? These people really make me mad. Why doesn’t he just go and face off with GOD, for crying out loud; HE’s the one that wrote the song, so take it up with HIM! I’m just the worshiper, man.

We had a meeting after church (at California Noodle House – what else is new?) about our choice of songs for the CD that we’ll be making during the following weekends. We decided on a good set of songs.

I went home and played FFX. Jecht is IMPOSSIBLE. I see no way that I will be able to beat him. His HP is unlimited it seems like.

We went to this new Chinese restaurant for Mother’s Day dinner, then they drove me back to Berkeley. I studied for the Stagecraft final tomorrow, and did other stuff.

5-13-2002

I woke up pretty late this morning and studied a little for the Stagecraft final. I didn’t study that hard because it didn’t seem like I needed to (I checked up on AOTC news constantly and went to eat with Leon & pals), and when the final actually came, the only questions I had trouble with were the ones that were NOT covered in the review session last week or the review sheet he gave us.

I went back to my room and messed around, basking in the glory of a major obstacle overcome. Pablo, who finished the semester COMPLETELY today and will be heading home tomorrow, invited Danny and I over for apple martinis. I declined, but I didn’t want to be a party pooper, and he WAS leaving tomorrow, and I WAS only getting a taste of it, so I ended up insisting that he give me only a taste. As it turned out, I got about 5 sips worth of taste in a plastic cup, which was still significantly less than a shot. It was strong but not as bad as I thought, and tasted pretty good, and then I asked him what was in it. It was a mixture of some sour apple weird stuff (15% alcohol content) and vodka (40%). So I didn’t take any more, and turned down other offers of more various types of alcoholic beverages. Look at my control, man, look at my control! I didn’t get drunk, or even “buzzed,” or even enough to make me feel anything at all, but just enough to make me forget that I still had class at 3:00. I was late by about half an hour.

We watched Dancer in the Dark, which was a brilliant movie, though some of the cinematography and editing during normal scenes was overly jittery and annoying. But the musical numbers were so cool and neat, and Bjork’s acting was really good! Her music is good too. I am now a newly won Bjork fan. I had the wrong idea about her the whole time; her goofy performance at the Oscars a couple of years ago kind of turned me off. That song actually was awesome in the movie.

I stayed for a little of the discussion, hoping to hear at least SOMETHING interesting on my last day of class of the year. And what do you know, that old smart-ass show-off dude made some obscure, meaningless reference to another movie, JUST LIKE I KNEW HE WOULD, to display his fancy useless movie trivia knowledge. WHAT A JERK. So I left.

I ate dinner, then hung around in my room. I decided to watch Episode IV, so I checked out a TV and VCR from the SM booth, and brought it upstairs just when Danny got back. I didn’t want to bother him, so I didn’t watch it in the room. Suzy came in and asked me to take a picture of the back of her head. Then I went downstairs to return the TV and VCR and to go to the lounge to watch the movie.

It started off fine. Then partway in, William came in with his Dreamcast, and we spent an hour and a half playing all these street fighting games (Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK, and Soul Calibur) even though he said he only wanted to play for half an hour. It was fun, even though I won about two games total.

I continued to watch until a couple of girls wanted to watch a movie they made for some project. Mike from down the hall was in it.

I watched the rest of the movie. Various people came in while I was watching, and not many people could even tell which one it was, even though it was totally obvious it was A New Hope. William said the acting and everything was terrible. No one understood me, except for Sirina (don’t know how to spell it), who not only commended me for “doing my homework” (Star Wars homework, she meant), but she knew that I was preparing for AOTC, and she knew what day it was coming out (Thursday), which surprised me because no one else knew; they all had to ask me and I had to tell them. Anyway...

I am FREE. I’ll probably watch another two movies tomorrow.

5-14-2002

Ahh... I woke up late again and fooled around til afternoon, when I watched The Empire Strikes Back. About half an hour from the end, the fire alarm went off and I had to go outside. When all the commotion was over, I went back inside to finish the rest of the movie.

At dinner time, I went to eat while Danny played “Black & White” on my computer. I ate with Nancy and this other dude from the 8^th floor, and was later joined by Suzy and Shaila. Upon arrival back at my room, I found Danny still playing that game. After a while he stopped, and Suzy came by to give me her English paper so I could proofread it a little (Nancy had spread word about my proofreading – she got an A- on that last paper, and I have no finals til the 24^th, so I have time now to do this kind of stuff). Then I went downstairs and watched Return of the Jedi. Some people came down to watch for periods of time; I was again amazed by people who knew nothing about Star Wars, or had not even seen any of the movies. People couldn’t tell which movie I was watching, and some didn’t even know that Luke and Leia were siblings, or that Darth Vader was their father. Man.

Pablo is leaving tonight. I will sincerely miss the leftist ranting and conservative-bashing joy that he brought to our room.