Social Bookmarks
who’s getting one?
iPhone? Ha, pathetic.
iPod? Even worse.
Zune? The crux of awful.
Me? I’m getting an iCross.
ht: Third Watch
yeah… i’m a pomo. so what?
Ok, apologies to all of my readers who are already postmodernists (pomos), this post isn’t for you. No, this post is instead for those who know me (in person), but don’t quite know what I stand for anymore, and have likely heard some negative opinions on my viewpoints.
Ok, so what do I stand for?
The desecration of all things sacred, and the destruction of America.
Ok, just kidding.
Truth:
Seriously, let’s run over it. You’ve probably heard some negative connotations associated with post modernism. The biggest of these is normally “Post-modernists deny absolute truth.” While this may be true in some cases, you’ll find that most Christian Post modernists do not deny absolute truth exists; instead a generalized opinion is that we don’t quite have a full grasp of what absolute truth is. In my personal opinion, God represents absolute truth, and since we can’t know God wholly we can’t quite fully grasp absolute truth. I am completely fine with saying that I don’t have a grasp on truth, and that I’m (likely) wrong on many things.
Church:
I’m still working through a lot of the things I think about when it comes to the gathering of “Christians.” What I do know is that church isn’t confined to meetings approved by elders, pastors, or any other leadership, rather church can (and should) happen in coffee shops, pubs, houses, and any other place where believers can talk. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with singing corporately (in fact I think the bible applauds it), I am not a fan any longer of building services around the format of 45 minutes of music, 30 minutes of talking, and another 5 minutes for a feel good song to send them out on. That’s personal opinion, I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with it, I just don’t like it. (If you like it, then it’s cool with me)
The Bible:
I grew up with the whole inerrant view of scripture (God breathed meant perfect and without flaw or error). My opinion has been changing for some time, but was strongly altered after reading “Misquoting Jesus.” I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the topic of inerrancy.
So with that out of the way, how do I view the Bible?
As God breathed and divinely inspired. ☺ Yet, one cannot deny the human aspect of the scripture, it becomes evident when comparing just the gospels to one another. I feel like we can gather a ton of light from studying the holistic themes of the Bible, as well as trying to see each individual author in light of their human bias and audience.
I’m sure there are plenty of other themes out there that need to be discussed, and I’ll do those in due time, but that’s the down right basics of what I am now.
Questions?
As always, post em.
Why go to church?
Third Watch has got an interesting post going on asking his readers if (and why) we/you/they/all should go to church.
For my part, it’s still a question I’m working through. I’ve stated before my idea of what church should be and what church is are different, and I’m not a huge fan of mainline churches these days. I’ll reiterate a few points for the sake of the conversation.
I think we should go to church to fellowship, to expand our knowledge of God, and to find a community of support. What we get is instead a nicely packaged show, complete with lights (if your church is into such) video and that emotional high which seems to be the focal point of all services. (Not knocking on music, but it’s not really my cup of tea anymore).
His third question is “If a person does not experience those things, should they not attend? Or is church/worship a waste of time?”
To which I’d have to say, it feels like it certainly is at times.
missional
Does blogging really get any better than this? Blake, sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar.
rss reader
Ok, so I’ve started to use twitterific and let me say- it’s amazing. But, here’s a question- does anyone know of an RSS reader that essentially functions like twitterific?
god
How does God interact with this world?
A question that I’m sure bothers everyone at some point in their life. Who hasn’t had a fervent prayer go un-answered, or at least not answered in the way the pious individual was wanting. Does this mean that God is indeed unconcerned with the goings on of humanity? Or perhaps God is teaching us a lesson. Maybe his attention is focused elsewhere. All of these are correct for all we know.
Really, I’ve never come across a verse that definitively says what God’s does with the world on a day-to-day basis. Yes, he sent Jesus, yes Jesus shows God does pay attention, but does he interact anymore. There’s some interesting conversational theology I’ve been hearing about lately, where a group has been discussing the idea that God actually needs humans to accomplish his will here on Earth. Then there’s guys like Piper who believe that God is mechanistically pulling every string like a puppet master in space.
I think the biggest impact on our views of God’s interaction with us is our self-imposed level of need of God. Basically, a person who feels like they need God to help them at every twist and turn more likely feels that God is this mechanistic puppet master. On the other hand you have the self-assured successful businessperson, who doesn’t think they need God, they’re more likely part of this up and out view of God. Where does God actually stand?
It’s a frustrating thing to think about. It gets personal quite fast.
I don’t like the idea of a God who separates himself from humanity. In fact I down right hate it. On the other hand I don’t think that God is a puppet master. Where does that leave me?
Let me preface this next part by saying I am the farthest thing from a scholar. I haven’t extensively studied biblical texts, let alone the Greek/Hebrew manuscripts and the entire nuance of the languages.
Here’s my view on God.
He’s involved in this world. I think he knows, feels, understands, and loves the world. Yet he must hate it at the same time. Not the Driscoll version of God hates you personally, but God hating the evils committed here. In my view God must be involved in this crazy world, otherwise the craziness will just get to be too much. While I don’t think he’s a puppet master, I do think he’s the ultimate ear whisperer. A subtle influencer of men. That’s my ultimate view of God, post the whole miraculous resurrection thing. Sure I think he steps in with some flashy big ways sometimes (read Jesus Freaks), but I think God’s interaction with Humanity is mostly done in secret.
Not “God I lost my keys” and God whispers “check under the left couch cushion,” but this feeling of knowledge we shouldn’t have. Durkheim calls it collective effervescence, Jung calls it Collective unconscious, and Rob Bell calls it God. When there’s something there that we don’t understand but it leads us to act. That’s my view. I think we’ve all felt it, there’s just something that causes us to act in a way that we didn’t think we would. Evangelicals say when they witness (two words I have a large aversion to… evangelize and witness) the right things just come into their head.
I feel like my thoughts on the topic are far from complete, but I needed to etch this out on paper (screen). Thanks for listening.
checking in
I forgot just how much of my life baseball sucks up. Three hours a night nearly every night, plus more hours if I’m actually at the game (like I was and Monday and will be all weekend). I’ve got some thoughts that I am working on, I should post those up in the next few days. Reading through “Misquoting Jesus” right now, I definitely have some thoughts on that.
Haven’t really been able to do too much reading, with the plague last week, and opening day(s) this week, but I hope I can dive in a little deeper tomorrow, and this weekend in between games.
Trying out the whole twitter thing, you can see my account here, I’m still not quite sure if I’ll actually use it, but it’s set up and ready to go. I’ll probably test it out over the next few days.
I’m also thinking about a baseball blog. We’ll see about that.
baseball
Just wanted to post up a few quick thoughts on this year, with opening day (the real opening day, not the Japanese crap) less than 2 days away, I probably should have posted before this, but oh well.
Likes:
Escobar. He had a phenomenal spring break, batted over .500 for the first two weeks of spring training, spent the off season training with Rentaria, and gained quite a bit of bulk. He should be pretty hot right out of the gate. What I don’t like is the six errors.
Diaz. I’ve always liked the guy, I love how he can take the nastiest swing at one pitch and essentially set up the pitcher to give him the same pitch that he then places either against or over the wall. He had a hot spring too, ending with an average just shy of .400. Hopefully he doesn’t end up platooning, but we’ll see.
Hudson. Come on, the guy is hot. I’ll admit, I have a complete man crush on him, and he makes me want to get a crazy tattoo on the underside of my wrist. But he’s still lights out, I can remember how incredulous everyone was last year when he went with the >1 ERA for a few weeks straight. I think we’ll see something similar this year.
Mike Hampton. I know I know, this guy should worry me, with the glass arm and such. But look at his spring numbers, he pitched the spring with an ERA of under 2, and realy hasn’t looked unhealthy at all. If he can stay solid and go 200 innings then our bullpen will be on of the best rested in the league.
Worries:
Kelly Johnson. I like him, I like him a lot, but he’s been kind of rough this spring. I think he’ll heat up in a few weeks, but I’m worried he may lose his job, or at least be forced to platoon, with Prado, who had a great spring.
Chipper. He’s always a worry, the guy hasn’t spent a season without going on the DL in a few years. That’s just nasty. If this is truly to be the year that we return to the post season, Chipper must remain healthy.
Pitching. We put up two pitchers over forty, one pitcher who hasn’t pitched since August of 05. Then our bullpen, until Gonzalez returns, is a little scary.
sickness and health
So apparently the plague decided to visit my house this past week, I was running a fever of 103 at one point. Becky caught whatever I had too, so we’ve been a pretty miserable bunch. The worst part of it is the Wellstar urgent care doctor that I went to told me it was OK for me to go back to work. I freaking work in fast food, if anything I should be precluded from work for even the smallest illness. I ran the 103 fever after they told me that it was OK to go back to work.
Sometimes I think that doctors are all quacks.
The other good part of this weeks story comes before I went to the wellstar (which is kind of like a doctor chain), Becky called our (awful) insurance company to find out where I could go for free. They gave her the name a place that was a half hour away, so she loads me in the car and takes me down there. When we got down there and had filled out all the paperwork, the lady at the desk said it was gonna be $250 bucks. What?!
So it’s taken me four days, but I think I’m on the cusp of feeling 100% again. It helps when you sleep for 10 hours when I did today.
In other news: opening day (if you don’t count that Japanese bull crap that happened this week) is Sunday, Braves open up with the Nats at the Nats new Stadium, look for Hudson to dominate against a fairly weak lineup. On Monday, we’re going down for the home opener, which is always great fun, a few friends are doing a tailgate party that Becky and I will swing by, then we’ve got some pretty good seats just past first base (Gotta love eBay). After that we’ve got another 9 games already lined up, I’m hoping to pick up a few more by scavenging eBay for good deals.
today
It’s called Holy Saturday. I guess they couldn’t come up with a better name for it than that, I mean the entire week is called holy week for crying out loud. The Filipinos refer to it as Black Saturday, and I think I’m going to adopt that name.
I think we’ve lost sight of this day, like so much of our heritage, and it’s a travesty. Tomorrow, we get up and those of us who go to church will most likely sing songs of the victory of Christ and other great themes. I think a large number of Christians will take time to think about Sunday and all that it means, and I wholly support that.
But, what about today? What about Black Saturday? Can we really grasp the significance of this day? This three-year whirlwind ended with a bang, but not the kind that was expected. Instead it ended with the bang you see when that character whom you rooted for during the entire movie just dies. It’s that emptiness that you feel when you see the long drawn out death scene, the slow motion camera, and the deafening off all sound but the violin in the background.
Take that feeling and let it abound, and maybe, just maybe we can grasp the beginnings of the sorrow that Black Saturday must have been.
But instead of thinking about today, reflecting on the coming daybreak, we move straight from Friday to Sunday. Some churches (mine included) have even begun to celebrate Easter Sunday on Saturday!
I work Saturdays, so I can’t do it this year, but I propose next year, a day of silence is taken. A day to reflect on the sorrow felt within the followers of Christ on this day, a day to cleanse ourselves and prepare us for the glory that is Easter Sunday.