i've been learning some interesting things about this word we throw around (the one in the title). i talked about it some in earlier posts, but i want to develop some thoughts more fully, if i can.
i read something that really caught my attention in Brian Mclaren's book "A Generous Orthodoxy". i don't have the book with me so i'll paraphrase: the church is a continuation of the original twelve disciples, a group of people learning to follow Jesus in a voluntary community. Mclaren was summing up what anabaptists believed about the church, and it really stood out to me. anabaptists are pretty interesting people in the first place, with some pretty radical beliefs about non-violence, etc. but this idea of the church is something that's new to me.
the concept has been rattling around in my head for a while, but this is the first time i've see it written out clearly like that. naturally my mind took off. what if that's how we thought about church? we always here that the church is the community of believers, but do we really live that way? what if instead of saying "i'm going to church" we said "i'm going to spend time with the church" or "i'm going to meet with the church" or how about "i'm hanging out with the family tonight?" imagine the radical difference we would see in church life if we thought that way.
One of the saddest things for me recently is to see how not only our society, but even our community of faith has become radically individualistic to the point that believers oppose legislation that benefits the poorest of the poor. i don't mean to insinuate that these are great programs that could never fail, they are usually filled with waste and rarely give people the support they need. what i'm trying to say is that many conservative right wing christians are opposed to the concept of caring for the poor. the philosophy of social darwinism has permeated the core of our faith in America even as we fight the far less insidious biological Darwinism in our schools.
what happened? when did we turn the commands to care for the widows and orphans into opt in programs? i've said it before, but it needs to be said again. it's not about me and God, it's about us and God. when the Father saw man working alone in Eden he said "it is not good for Man to be alone". God wasn't just creating a helper when he made Eve, he was creating a community, one that was supposed to fill the earth and subdue, all in relationship with God. us and God.
there are a lot of ideological reasons for the prevalence of American individualism in the churches including the influence of Lockian Liberalism at the time of the founding as well as the infiltration of Social Darwinism in the early 1900s and this could get ridiculously long if i went into it all. suffice to say that i believe our community has been hijacked to defend the interests of the wealthy when we are clearly commanded to defend the orphan and the widow. i think it's time we took our community back and start being the church.
peace.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
what can i say
the team just got back yesterday from MO after spending a week there working at a christian childrens ranch. i have so many half learned lessons and mixed metaphors running around in my head right now; i want to try to get some of them written down and maybe they'll start to come together into something cohesive that i can actually think about without getting confused.
the first and, i believe, most important lesson is that of the christian's responsibility to be a part of what we know as social justice. i know that a lot of times those of us in the conservative evangelical (ce) branch of our faith think of social justice as something that those liberal so-called christians do in order to work their way to God. you know the ones, those heretics that believe that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead and that he wasn't really God. guess what: despite their less than orthodox (read:wrong) beliefs about the divinity of the Son, they actually got something right. Titus 3:14 reads: our people must also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, so that they will not be unfruitful.
so often in the ce tradition (most ces would cringe at the word tradition, but ce has become just that) we use the word fruit to refer to something ethereal. we use fruit to refer to the "immortal souls" of men. we use fruit to describe our personal growth as we learn more about God. we use fruit to describe a set of attributes that are truly visible only when we're acting them out in our lives, but that we so often lump together in this hypothetical "christian character" classification.
paul is not talking about this when he says we shouldn't be unfruitful. he's saying that we need to be active in good deeds to produce fruit. fruit is something that can be produced by our physical actions. this doesn't make any sense if we continue to use the ce paradigm. a worldview that has been so inexplicably influenced by second century gnosticism that it has morphed into something that doesn't resemble early christianity at all. we've fallen into an incorrect mindset. the shift was subtle, but it is clearly there. we seem to be under the impression that the physical world is evil, that the only remedy is for God to completely destroy it and take us believers away to a spiritual plane to live in eternal bliss.
there is no way in my mind that i can reconcile this to what i see in scripture, allow me to give a few examples. when Jesus rose from the dead, he went to great lengths to show that he was actually physically alive. eating with the disciples and cooking breakfast for them wasn't just a way to spend time with them, it was to show them that he indeed had a physical body. why do all this if God is going to simply destroy this physical plane of existence and exchange it for a purely spiritual one.
as for the idea that we're bound for an existence of eternal bliss worshiping the Father, i think the concept is correct, but it's implementation is not. when God created humanity, he gave him a specific purpose: man was to care for the garden with his helper, the woman. they were to fill the earth and subdue it, and give names to all the animals. part of being human is to be engaged in work, to actively be filling the earth and subduing it. the rest of being human is to be in a relationship with God. God gave us a clear task, one that is not complete, and one that we are frequently working against. So what is the Day of the Lord going to look like? i can't believe that it involves the annihilation of creation. creation is what we were made for. we are the caretakers of what God made. if God destroys creation, he doesn't need us. the Day of the Lord will most definitely involve a purging of creation, a destruction of the evil in the world, but not the destruction of what is good and beautiful, the parts that we were made for.
it may seem like i've drifted from my original point in this post, but we really just took the long way around. if creation is not to be destroyed, if we are to be a part of the world God created for eternity, then what we do on earth matters. the evil that we do will be destroyed, purged and washed away, but the good we do will stand. the good deeds that we do will bear fruit, a lasting legacy in eternity. so back to shiloh christian children's ranch; the people there are doing good deeds that has and already will bear fruit. many of the children that have spent time there have eventually found their way to a relationship with the Father. the ranch is having a huge impact on an incredible number of people, all because a few families really believe that their good deeds will bear fruit.
i'll talk about some other thoughts i had about the week in future posts. also, a lot of the ideas i've discussed are proposed by Bishop N.T. Wright in his book Surprised By Hope. others are thoughts that i've had that were sparked by reading that book. i'm sorry i don't have everything footnoted properly. ask me if you have any questions about anything i've said.
peace
the first and, i believe, most important lesson is that of the christian's responsibility to be a part of what we know as social justice. i know that a lot of times those of us in the conservative evangelical (ce) branch of our faith think of social justice as something that those liberal so-called christians do in order to work their way to God. you know the ones, those heretics that believe that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead and that he wasn't really God. guess what: despite their less than orthodox (read:wrong) beliefs about the divinity of the Son, they actually got something right. Titus 3:14 reads: our people must also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, so that they will not be unfruitful.
so often in the ce tradition (most ces would cringe at the word tradition, but ce has become just that) we use the word fruit to refer to something ethereal. we use fruit to refer to the "immortal souls" of men. we use fruit to describe our personal growth as we learn more about God. we use fruit to describe a set of attributes that are truly visible only when we're acting them out in our lives, but that we so often lump together in this hypothetical "christian character" classification.
paul is not talking about this when he says we shouldn't be unfruitful. he's saying that we need to be active in good deeds to produce fruit. fruit is something that can be produced by our physical actions. this doesn't make any sense if we continue to use the ce paradigm. a worldview that has been so inexplicably influenced by second century gnosticism that it has morphed into something that doesn't resemble early christianity at all. we've fallen into an incorrect mindset. the shift was subtle, but it is clearly there. we seem to be under the impression that the physical world is evil, that the only remedy is for God to completely destroy it and take us believers away to a spiritual plane to live in eternal bliss.
there is no way in my mind that i can reconcile this to what i see in scripture, allow me to give a few examples. when Jesus rose from the dead, he went to great lengths to show that he was actually physically alive. eating with the disciples and cooking breakfast for them wasn't just a way to spend time with them, it was to show them that he indeed had a physical body. why do all this if God is going to simply destroy this physical plane of existence and exchange it for a purely spiritual one.
as for the idea that we're bound for an existence of eternal bliss worshiping the Father, i think the concept is correct, but it's implementation is not. when God created humanity, he gave him a specific purpose: man was to care for the garden with his helper, the woman. they were to fill the earth and subdue it, and give names to all the animals. part of being human is to be engaged in work, to actively be filling the earth and subduing it. the rest of being human is to be in a relationship with God. God gave us a clear task, one that is not complete, and one that we are frequently working against. So what is the Day of the Lord going to look like? i can't believe that it involves the annihilation of creation. creation is what we were made for. we are the caretakers of what God made. if God destroys creation, he doesn't need us. the Day of the Lord will most definitely involve a purging of creation, a destruction of the evil in the world, but not the destruction of what is good and beautiful, the parts that we were made for.
it may seem like i've drifted from my original point in this post, but we really just took the long way around. if creation is not to be destroyed, if we are to be a part of the world God created for eternity, then what we do on earth matters. the evil that we do will be destroyed, purged and washed away, but the good we do will stand. the good deeds that we do will bear fruit, a lasting legacy in eternity. so back to shiloh christian children's ranch; the people there are doing good deeds that has and already will bear fruit. many of the children that have spent time there have eventually found their way to a relationship with the Father. the ranch is having a huge impact on an incredible number of people, all because a few families really believe that their good deeds will bear fruit.
i'll talk about some other thoughts i had about the week in future posts. also, a lot of the ideas i've discussed are proposed by Bishop N.T. Wright in his book Surprised By Hope. others are thoughts that i've had that were sparked by reading that book. i'm sorry i don't have everything footnoted properly. ask me if you have any questions about anything i've said.
peace
Friday, February 20, 2009
electricity is fun.
So i have this old laptop lying around, i figured i'd try to do something with it. the power connection is broken, so i decided to hardwire the power cable (blue and red) to the laptop, bypassing the little connector/adapter board that broke in the computer.
after removing the board (which i did years ago when i was going to try to find a new one, and have now lost), i found myself facing a conundrum. i need to go from the two wires in the power adaptor to the four that are in the computer.
the problem is, i don't know (a) if this will work and (b) what goes to what. now my guess is (a) yes, but if it doesn't i go from having a non-working laptop that i've scavenged for parts to pretty much the same thing, so no big deal there. as for (b), my guess is that the wires in the red circle is the ground (they were originally sheathing the blue). and blue is the hot wire. as for the laptop side, i know red is hot and black is ground. what i really need to know is can i combine the two grounds and two hot in the yellow?
i need to get a soldering iron to finish this up, which means waiting till radio shack is open tomorrow. if anyone has any ideas or suggestions they'd be greatly appreciated. otherwise, i'll play it by ear.
peace
Thursday, February 19, 2009
puzzle
This is just one of a huge list of puzzles on this site. i was able to figure it out, which is why i re-posted it. heheh.
The Bridge
4 people need to traverse a bridge. The bridge is old and only two persons can use it at the same time. It is night and to traverse the bridge a flashlight is needed.
The group only has one flashlight. Each person traverses the bridge at different speeds and when 2 go together the faster one needs to adapt for the slower one (otherwise they can't share the light).
The first person (A) needs 10 minutes to cross the bridge. The second (B) 5; the third (C) 2, and the fastest one (D) only 1 minute.
How long does it take the group to cross the bridge.
Example (not the most efficient one):
A+D -> // 10 min (let's assume the slowest and the fastest go first)
D <- // 1 min (D needs to bring back the flashlight)
B+D -> // 5 min
D <- // 1 min
C+D -> // 2 min (and the group has crossed the bridge)
--
totals 19 minutes.
There is a better way.
Note: A computer program would find the solution. So no tricks involved.
from http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Puzzles
peace and enjoy
The Bridge
4 people need to traverse a bridge. The bridge is old and only two persons can use it at the same time. It is night and to traverse the bridge a flashlight is needed.
The group only has one flashlight. Each person traverses the bridge at different speeds and when 2 go together the faster one needs to adapt for the slower one (otherwise they can't share the light).
The first person (A) needs 10 minutes to cross the bridge. The second (B) 5; the third (C) 2, and the fastest one (D) only 1 minute.
How long does it take the group to cross the bridge.
Example (not the most efficient one):
A+D -> // 10 min (let's assume the slowest and the fastest go first)
D <- // 1 min (D needs to bring back the flashlight)
B+D -> // 5 min
D <- // 1 min
C+D -> // 2 min (and the group has crossed the bridge)
--
totals 19 minutes.
There is a better way.
Note: A computer program would find the solution. So no tricks involved.
from http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Puzzles
peace and enjoy
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
love, community, and bishop wright
i've read a lot of Bishop N.T. Wright recently, and i've come to the conclusion that he is indeed a brilliant man. we've been talking about community and love at ccf, and it's reinforced in my mind the importance of those two concepts. my connection of two of these subjects is in the pre-eminence of love. Wright proposes that as believers we need a new epistemology(study of how we know). he proposes what he calls an "epistemology of love", the idea that we know things through love, that we can only know things fully through love.
it seemed strange when i first heard it, but it has grown on me. i don't think i fully understand the practical implications (it seems like it might have a hard time replacing empirical testing in science), but for a huge part of our daily lives, it makes wonderful sense. If we apply it to our relationships, we gain knowledge about those around us through loving them. we learn about God by loving him. and, to tie in the third theme, we build and learn about our community through love.
Obviously Wright does a far better job of explaining this than i do, but the idea is fascinating, and i can't help but try to apply it to my field. political science has been so permeated by numbers and statistics and incomprehensible equations that it's become hard for me to see the people. sure, it's the study of power, and how governments work, but at its heart, i think political science is and should be about people. how different is it when we love the people that we study? would we understand people better if we loved them, instead of experimenting on them?
peace
it seemed strange when i first heard it, but it has grown on me. i don't think i fully understand the practical implications (it seems like it might have a hard time replacing empirical testing in science), but for a huge part of our daily lives, it makes wonderful sense. If we apply it to our relationships, we gain knowledge about those around us through loving them. we learn about God by loving him. and, to tie in the third theme, we build and learn about our community through love.
Obviously Wright does a far better job of explaining this than i do, but the idea is fascinating, and i can't help but try to apply it to my field. political science has been so permeated by numbers and statistics and incomprehensible equations that it's become hard for me to see the people. sure, it's the study of power, and how governments work, but at its heart, i think political science is and should be about people. how different is it when we love the people that we study? would we understand people better if we loved them, instead of experimenting on them?
peace
Monday, December 15, 2008
hilarious
i have two extremely funny things to share with you. both have happened to me while sitting alone in my room saturday and today.
First, i was working on a study guide for my Middle Eastern Studies class and typed the word "Jihadists" it came up as incorrectly spelled, so i right clicked to check what they suggested. i was pretty sure i'd spelled it correctly, but i wanted to make sure. The first spelling suggestion? "Judaists".
Second, i reinstalled windows on saturday (yes, a week and a half and already a full reinstall). As i was setting up the OS, a dialogue box popped up:
"Windows has automatically adjusted your screen resolution. If you can read this click 'OK'".
hope you find those as funny as i did
peace
First, i was working on a study guide for my Middle Eastern Studies class and typed the word "Jihadists" it came up as incorrectly spelled, so i right clicked to check what they suggested. i was pretty sure i'd spelled it correctly, but i wanted to make sure. The first spelling suggestion? "Judaists".
Second, i reinstalled windows on saturday (yes, a week and a half and already a full reinstall). As i was setting up the OS, a dialogue box popped up:
"Windows has automatically adjusted your screen resolution. If you can read this click 'OK'".
hope you find those as funny as i did
peace
thoughts on forum posts and chat/text shorthand
so i've just spent the last thirty minutes reading through some forums online. my brain feels like i've been studying for three or four hours.
i used to think that spelling and punctuation errors didn't really bother me all that much, but now i'm not so sure. i think i've figured out the problem: i've grown used to reading works that use correct spelling and punctuation. i can read them faster, because i'm not actually reading every single letter, i'm skipping through it quickly, recognizing the shape of the word and moving on. so when things are misspelled or there are errors in punctuation i actually have to slow down and think about what is on the page, much like studying.
please don 't think that i'm saying i'm a perfect writer. i just use spellcheck, and proof read. i still make mistakes, which is why, if i'm turning something in for a grade, i send it to someone else to proofread it for me as well.
in short, plz dont writ like ths. its hard 2 raed.
i used to think that spelling and punctuation errors didn't really bother me all that much, but now i'm not so sure. i think i've figured out the problem: i've grown used to reading works that use correct spelling and punctuation. i can read them faster, because i'm not actually reading every single letter, i'm skipping through it quickly, recognizing the shape of the word and moving on. so when things are misspelled or there are errors in punctuation i actually have to slow down and think about what is on the page, much like studying.
please don 't think that i'm saying i'm a perfect writer. i just use spellcheck, and proof read. i still make mistakes, which is why, if i'm turning something in for a grade, i send it to someone else to proofread it for me as well.
in short, plz dont writ like ths. its hard 2 raed.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Thoughts as i rode my bike across campus today
-This helmet makes me look like an idiot, i'm taking it off...no, there's cop's everywhere, i can't afford a ticket. why are there so many cops in the middle of campus?
-Do those guys really have ratchet straps strung between trees to walk across? weird.
-Nothing says power nerd like wooden practice swords. oh, they're twirling them.
-Will i break the wheels on this bike if i try to jump the curb? probably. i better slow down.
-Do those guys really have ratchet straps strung between trees to walk across? weird.
-Nothing says power nerd like wooden practice swords. oh, they're twirling them.
-Will i break the wheels on this bike if i try to jump the curb? probably. i better slow down.
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