old_blog/about.md

title	date	layout
About	2018-07-18T03:02:05-05:00	page

My legal name is Elliott Pardee. However, I use my (to-be) chrismation name, Seraphim. I'm 20 years old. I live with my wonderful girlfriend, Mosha, outside of Philadelphia, PA. I was born in Port Huron, MI. I am an Orthodox Christian, aspiring computer scientist, and aspiring husband and father.

Projects

My best and primary project is BibleBot (GitHub), a Discord bot for referencing the Bible and other Christian resources. It serves over 6,000 servers with a combined audience of over 400,000 users.

My secondary project is canon_law (GitHub), which is a web service for referencing Orthodox canon law. It is not yet finished but all that is lacking is the rest of the content.

The only tertiary project at the moment is goarch_api (PyPI / GitHub), a Python interface for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America's Chapel API. I will have more similar projects in the future.

Trivia

Personality

My type on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator seems to be around ISTP. My last two indicators are in the middle, so I can also be in the range of ISTJ, ISFP, or ISFJ. On the Enneagram, I seem to be 6w5 (Enneagram 6 with a Five-Wing). For the Big 5 Personality Inventory, I received the following scores: Openness to Experience: 3.0/5.0 (60%), Conscientiousness: 3.0/5.0 (60%), Extraversion: 3.4/5.0 (68%), Agreeableness: 4.1/5.0 (82%), Neuroticism: 3.1/5.0 (62%)

I would describe my disposition in life as optimistic realism. I hope for the best in all things, however I am able to realize whether people or events will act in a certain way due to certain circumstances.

I prefer colder temperatures over hotter ones, I will typically keep temperatures around 62-70° F (16-21° C / 289-294° K). Preferred vacation spots include forests, mountains, and anything in between.

Religion/Theology

As mentioned earlier, I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian. As I have yet to join a parish and become a catechumen, I do not have a jurisdiction. After some discernment, I believe my patron saint is Saint Seraphim of Sarov, whose name I will take after and whose life I will strive to imitate. Saint Seraphim, pray for me.

Being the developer of BibleBot, this didn't come without a fascination with the Bible. I find translations interesting in and of themselves, but that doesn't imply that I don't have favorites. Out of the translations available, my rankings are:

1. Orthodox Study Bible - While this may appear biased initially, I find the Septuagint OT much more pleasurable to read than the Masoretic Text. If I could, I'd strip away all the study notes and pages in order to have a nice pocket Bible of just the unique text and translation used.
2. RSV (with Apocrypha) - The RSV was the first modern English translation to consider the Orthodox usage. With the successor NRSV, these are the only Bibles with the full Orthodox canon (including 4 Maccabees, only accepted in the Georgian Orthodox Church). While I would endorse the NRSV just as equally, I find the gender-neutral language to become a burden in many places where it shouldn't be.
3. NKJV - I enjoy the Psalms/Proverbs and the Byzantine text used in the NT. I own a pocket NKJV and it does well on-the-go.

Of course, this only scratches the surface.

Next is my theological stances. This doesn't go too deep beyond general theology, but if I find ever a need to add more, I'll be sure to do so.

In terms of soteriology and how that comes about, I agree with the Apostolic churches in the belief of synergism and the salvation process outlined by St. John Cassian. While God certainly makes the first move (and that a person cannot), it is required for salvation to cooperate with Him. I affirm unlimited and unconditional election, but I do not affirm total depravity or any other related ideas.

I believe the Bible is infallible in matters of doctrine, historical account (Genesis before Abraham aside), and moral teaching. However, I have seen evidence for both sides of inerrancy and I can't find myself to make a reasonable conclusion without contradiction.

On gifts of the Holy Spirit, I am continuationist. However, this does not mean that the average person can start speaking in tongues immediately following conversion. Gifts of the Holy Spirit are more prevalent through sanctification, as we see with many saints having the gift of prophesy.

In regards to how I feel about a literal millennium, I am amillennialist. Nonetheless, I do find myself sympathetic to postmillennialism.

Finally, the issue dividing the Oriental churches from the Eastern: Christology. I find both miaphysitism and Chalcedon's definition to be agreeing with each other, but from different perspectives. Language use aside, I have found no disagreement with Orientals about Christology.

Music

I would consider myself an audiophile in the sense that music plays a very important role in my life. It feels as though I've had a soundtrack to my life, and I associate songs to various times in my life when I had listened to them the most.

While I listen to many genres, the majority of what I listen to ends up somewhere around metal, post-hardcore, punk, post-/grunge, hip hop, and electronic music.

My favorite artists from different genres, but still keeping it broad:

• Heavy metal: Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed
• Metalcore: Killswitch Engage, early Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet For My Valentine
• Nu metal: Linkin Park, Slipknot
• Other rock: My Chemical Romance, Rise Against, Dope, The Offspring, Crossfade, Breaking Benjamin, Seether, Foo Fighters, Three Days Grace, Megadeth, Anthrax
• Hip hop: Kendrick Lamar, Logic, J. Cole, Eminem, Kid Cudi, Chance The Rapper, Childish Gambino, Atmosphere, Macklemore, Lil Dicky, Run The Jewels
• Electronic: deadmau5, Daft Punk, Haywyre, Swedish House Mafia, Knife Party, Stromae

Being musically-inclined, I also play bass guitar and am learning electric guitar and piano. I own a Ibanez SoundGear SR300EB bass and a Ibanez GIO GS171 guitar. I record using Ableton Live 10 and a Blue Snowball microphone. I also try my hand at producing hip hop beats, where I use VSTs like Massive, Serum, and Reaktor.

Here are some songs that I've produced:

we're still dreaming