A Theological Review of Yours Truly

I have to write my ordination paper soon. This is hard because I tend to take a Taoist stance and roll with what comes along. Deal with existence as it presents itself, not through a rigid system of absolutes found through theoretical case studies. Real life is much more fluid than that so therefore so must my thinking. That isn't to say I don't have some absolutes or that i'm totally ungrounded. I am open to being wrong and to be transformed either through reason, experience, or scripture. I can't tell you how often i've been changed by one or the other.. or all of the above!

My doctrine prof, Dr Peter Schmiechen wrote a great letter to me when my daughter was born. Dr Schmiechen is a genius theologian as well as a kind and gentle soul. he is an artisan who works with wood and i have a small Iona community cross that he made that i pray with often. anyway.. here is what he wrote as reference for those out there who are trying hard to understand where i'm coming from. it's also written as a reminder of who i'm percieved to be as i attempt to put on paper my fluid theology.

(this was written to my daughter just days after her birth, he dropped off slippers his wife knitted. the book came in May, after the Doctrine class was over.)

Dear Eve,

We met when you were but a few days old: sleeping calmly under the watchful eyes of your parents. Perhaps I will come to know you better but for now I wish to speak of your father. He is a good man. His life is made of many conflicting experiences, held in tension, waiting to be resolved. Some of that resolution appears to be taking place.

His family life was divided, his religious experience fractured several times, his interests were and still are quite varied. As you will discover, he is very bright and good with words, able to fire the imagination. He says he does not like duality or division, but he is constantly thinking in terms of either/or. He claims the inclusive tradition of medieval theology, where everything finds its proper place in an ordered universe, but he thinks about things more in terms of storm and stress, with bold images tied to tradition only by thin lines. But those lines make all the difference in the world.

He wants a church set free from dogma, absolutism, moralism, and arrogance, free to proclaim Christ the word of grace. He makes it sound like he is starting all over again but then drops hints of incarnation, cross, resurrection and real presence. He likes writers who ridicule abstract theories because Christ is a real word of grace, but leaves us wondering how this grace actually appears. The record shows it has be co-opted, controlled, abused and misused by nearly everyone, and that it would be helpful (Paul's helpful) to have some guidelines, but not a Sears' Manuel. At times he sounds like those who want to get back to the simples teachings of Jesus (which few have actually agreed on), only to surprise us that he really does think, believe and experience the mystery of grace incarnate in person and presence. He likes to set things at odds and in tension, but then the day is saved by simple affirmations of grace.

Maybe experience does triumph over dogma, tensions softened by love, old conflicts resolved by grace. Without knowing it, you were born into all of this: the child of your parents named for the mother of us all. Your father once recoiled at the thought of that mysterious story of Adam and Eve, but it appears he has mellowed, no doubt through the influence of your mother and now you.

It is fitting that he should be in the process of finding a faith home at the moment he and your mother are creating a home for you. So begins a process of mutual care among the three of you, an image of a larger grace.

Talk about a once in a life time letter... because Peter is a once in a lifetime guy. Check out his books on amazon: like Saving Power and esp.  Christ the Reconciler: A Theology of Opposites, Differences, and Enemies which this letter came with. If you want to understand where i'm coming from.. if i do as well... this book is part of it. always looking for the third way.. the transcendent way.. not really always compromising.. sometimes this way pisses everyone off.. sometimes this way gets you killed.

hope this letter was some light.. as it was for me. peace!

Walking Contradictions

imagine you've traveled back in time and you're face to face with a medieval Christian serf. you're able to communicate with him through some form or another (hey, worked in Timeline, it can work in your imagination too!). after the usual chit chat about the weather you ask him about his goals in life. how was he bettering his lot in life? what impact was he making on his children? what type of world did he want to leave for his kids?

all of these questions would be met with a blank face.

the Christian view of history which dominated Europe at this time percieved life as just preparation for the next. The greek concept of Cycles were abandoned but one aspect was retained, mainly that history is a decaying process. History has a distinct beginning, middle and end. Creation, redemption, and last judgment. many still have this view.

this is the Pauline, Augustinian view of the world. It also embraces the idea of Entropy. there is no room for the individual, just duties and obligations, not freedoms and rights, that defined life in the larger community.

in 1750, Jacque Turgot walked into his class room in Sorbonne. He rejected both the cycles of the Greeks and the concept of continued degradation of Christianity. He argued that history proceeds in a straight line and that each succeeding stage of history represents an advance over the preceding one. this is our prevailing view, largely, of history. and in the Enlightenment, we have the advance of the individual over and against the group as the sole unit of society.

but now we have a problem. our mindset is that the world is getting better and yet our theology and even some of our science is medieval. Just think of Genesis and biology and physcis for a second. our theology states that the world has fallen and will only get worse until Christ comes again. Biology states that every living thing will one day die and Physics that order breaks down into chaos. these are vast oversimplifications but you get the gist.

so what if our theology and science were brought up to meet our mindset? is it possible?

i think it is. what if Genesis was viewed as more of a 'maturing' like i've discussed in the past in a few posts like this one and this one too. So we can affirm Turgot but note that he didn't have it all right either... he didn't deal with entropy. So while the individual dies, the group lives on. and maybe the group will one day desolve into nothing as well, but maybe not.

i'm now suggesting that despite entropy and the fact that every one has a 100% mortality rate, maybe there is one thing in the universe that doesn't exhibit entropy, namely life. i wrote about this idea in this post from October.

why am i thinking all of this?

well i was discussing on another blog with my new friend Sabio, when it hit me. we as humans aren't really harnassing the power of mythos. the Modernist mindset is througly set on factual truth and operates on the assumption that "knowledge is certain, objective and good," followed by the belief that knowledge is "accessible to the human mind." Because knowledge is assumed to be good, rational, objective, and dispassionate, science is viewed as the savior that will rescue humanity from the ills of society as well as its vulnerability to nature. The future is, therefore, viewed as optimistic, things getting better thanks to our buddy Turgot. The Modern mind considered as suspect views that would "curtail autonomy" and individual freedom and those that seem to be based on some external authority other than reason and scientific [factual] experience.

But as science failed to cure all the ills of society and to free us of our vulnerability to nature and as societies the world over did not get better and better, empirical thought and individual autonomy began to slip as the formula for fulfillment. And by the 1970's, certainly—though the seeds of deconstruction were sprouting long before what was to be labeled "postmodern" would begin to disassemble the formula approach—a new view would begin to emerge.

In real life experience Modern individualism, autonomy and personal freedom had too often produced isolation, loneliness, estrangement, and the disintegration of community. we need a new model. one that harnesses the power of myth, community, and yet avoids the static labels and need for control that Modernists have yet doesn't fall into the superstitious rituals of our pre-modern Medieval peasant fore-bears. we still look for the gifts of the individual but in terms of the larger community. the individual is still the sole unit of society yet is placed in context and the connections are viewed as vital, not holding back or curtailing autonomy.

we become a people of covenant and autonomy.

what would that community look like?

is it possible?

Fiction as Truth: Ward Lecture

I attended the Ward Lecture here at LTS on 10/22 to hear Dr. Carol Hess present “Fiction as Truth: Novels as a source for (Paradoxical) Theology. It was a decent lecture and Dr. Hess articulated many things that i've been trying to say for a while now...

She began with Picasso’s quote “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” She then talked about how novels ought to be read alongside theory as novels do certain things that theory can’t. Novels make readers participators in lives of others different from themselves and make them sympathetic to characters they don’t interact with in their day to day lives. I completely agree with this. I couldn’t see racism through the theory, but through the history and reading novels with Black characters is how I started to understand.

I couldn't help but think of the difference between Gallielo's narrative presentation of his theories vs. Newton's mechanical and formulaic presentation. Gal is a hoot to read, and fun! Newton... not so much

Dr Hess then jumped to what makes good fiction and good theology and how they overlap. She stated that fiction and theology is set in time and place, it is provisional, it is paradoxical, ironic, and revelatory. I wish she would have spent more time here because I feel this is the core of the argument. We’re seeing this in our churches today with the “established” voice versus a more emergent model. This is not the usual Conservative versus Liberal theology that we have seen but something else due to the study of post-modern thought.
 
Many people ask me for my systematic theology and I state that I can’t fully give them one, and usually give them something close to this model. They then state that this couldn’t possibly be a theology that does any good and that even novels have a structure and plot devices. The problem with systems is they sanitize and simplify an ambiguous and complex world. No system ever contains the full picture.

What Fight Club Says about God and Community

Barry Taylor (Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy. Grand Rapids Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008.) holds Fight Club up as a prime example as what it means to be Postmodern Gothic. There is a transgressive nature in the mindset of the Gothic and the dominant message is “learn to live with mystery” and this is accomplished by sharpening one’s instincts (Taylor 142). So then the Gothic radically embraces passion, learning how emotions like fear, terror, horror, and sadness (as well as the more fiery passions of anger and rage) are means by which people learn to fight back. Fight Club does this to help people liberate themselves from a system that is draining the life away from their souls and keeping them from forming a true community. They find a new code of living through being shocked out of their old ways of doing things. They are able to “come to terms with the world around them through a renewed sense of self through their commitment to a new code of living” (Taylor 143).

For Tyler, dominant ideologies and cultural values exist to be subverted. The means of constructing identity is based on communal relationships, particularly with men although Marla becomes a bigger role as the film goes on, instead of material capitalistic measures.

Tyler does not turn to religion, although the language is frequently used in the film. The Narrator talks about the feeling of Fight Club as being in a Pentecostal church. The grunts were like speaking in tongues and the fights were like dancing. The Narrator seeks a nirvana, however; not salvation first and foremost. “And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”

Even more overt is the scene where Tyler seems to declare that he is an agnostic:

Tyler Durden: Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
Narrator: No, no, I... don't...
Tyler Durden: Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
Narrator: It isn't?
Tyler Durden: We don't need him!

Here we see the complete rejection of all that has rejected Tyler. In the philosophy of Fight Club, salvation is letting go of everything and depending on the community. This is very much like the church described in Acts. The renouncement of property, the subversion of the dominant culture, and finding identity not through the institutions of the day but in one another are all paralleled. The statement of "We are God's unwanted children" comes from Tyler's family system. He is trying to get's his father's attention and this morphs into trying to get God's attention, as noted in this trailer:

The first two rules of Fight Club echo Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, not to tell anyone of his being the Messiah. Word gets out and both movements take off. So is Tyler Durden a Christ figure? I would argue yes and his Christ figure is more in keeping with the Jewish-Christian church than the current idea. The idea of the Messiah as a political agent, anointed by God but completely mortal, that overthrows the oppressors. This is exactly what Tyler does, even going so far as to die at the end and even have a duel-nature. Tyler is both spiritual and human. This could be more along the lines of a Gnostic image of Christ and the real question at the end becomes who dies? Does the Narrator shoot Tyler and is still the same? Or, in Tyler’s death (the Brad Pitt version) we know have the Narrator fully “put on the mind of Tyler”? I would go with the last statement. In the ending scene of the film, we have the Narrator and Marla watching the buildings blow up in a quasi-romantic happy ending. The film then messes up and shows a rather graphic picture of a penis, just like Tyler used to splice into children’s films. This shows that the movement is very much alive and it’s real. Tyler is now in the projector booth and the audience should beware.

Fight Club’s dim view of institutions, including religious ones, are much like the postmodern suspicion of all things systemized. We see a member of Fight Club in the movie try to pick a fight with a priest, smacking the bible out of his hand and spraying water on it. The next scene shows the very same priest wining a fight and hugging his opponent. Even the leaders of the institutions are taken by the message of Tyler.



This idea is best summed up by Robert Capon when he states

“The gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race's perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man's well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for. Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won't be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now" (Capon 166).

Tyler has the same thing in mind. All systems fail, all we need is trust in one another, and to be honest with ourselves. We get our identity from being in community, true community, open and vulnerable. Fight Club embraces the uncertainty of the postmodern life, experienced as is, in the collapse of the supporting structures of modernity, in the loss of traditional social ordering. Reconfigurations of what it means “to be” are explored in every way possible and what emerges is a new idea of what constitutes family and community much like what came out of Christ’s teachings some 2,000 years ago.

A Fallen Letter

Dear Fellow Christians,

okay... once and for all! there was never an GARDEN OF EDEN! there were never just two ppl, an adam or an eve. scientifically the earth is billions of years old. God is very old. so quit acting like we'll return to a perfect state.

if you want a fall, it'd be when the first multi-celled organism ate another multi-cellular organism. it may have been when the single-celled organism ate another one to become a multi-cellular organism! hell! i dunno! what i do know is we can't keep believing in a fall or original sin or baptism washing away.

i heard a devout Christian say that they really don't like how their baby is filled with original sin because it cries all the time. WTF?! why not just get it baptised? then the original sin would wash off and you'd have no more crying.. that didn't work?! baby is still crying? prolly cause it's not a sin! it's the only way the baby can tell you what it needs. this type of moronic thought is what is driving ppl away from Christianity.

also... let's rearrange our thought on the fall.. cause apparently ppl like this idea. so how about we start out as a little baby, we're selfish because we have no concept of other ppl... much like Adam and Eve. only thinking of themselves, unaware that their actions could have consquences. we make mistakes, we do what is forbidden, and sure.. we sin.. but we LEARN! we GO AND SIN NO MORE!

we fall UPWARDS. we go from a place of selfish innocence to a place of spiritual maturity. in our spiritual maturity we see the bigger picture (albeit not the whole one) and we trust that we are guided, loved, and sustained by God. so much so that we are able to forgive and love our enemies.

what do we think about that? is that something we can do with?

respectfully,

-L

Absolute Truth?

much of this comes from Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips

To understand absolute truth, one must start with what exactly is the world and our location in it. Thomas Hobbes inthe Leviathan states that the "world is the whole mass of all things that are" but is never very clear on what he means by "all things."

Immanuel Kant talks about 'two worlds' which are very Platonic in formation. He talks about thephenomenal world and the noumenal world. Phenom: knowable by senses and interpreted by the mind. Noum: that which lies beyond the world of space and time, cause and effect. Kant talks about this is where Absolute Truth exists.

Plato talked about the world we see, like shadows and reflections on the wall of a cave. the absolute truth is beyond the walls of the cave and very few ever make it out, and those who do, it hurts their eyes and no one believes them.

John Locke talks about how truth can best be known through science and religion, namely that Christianity is the most reasonable and natural choice (duh, cause you're a Christian Locke...). nature holds the absolute truth but reason is the only means in which to interpret it and gain it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein stated that the world is "the totality of facts" which contain a logical structure that shape and delimit our world. facts are inherently knowable but "we must be silent" about the so-called unknowable until it is revealed.

Aristotle stated that the world we speak of, the universe as a whole is always being talked about through our relation with it. there is no such thing as objectivity or a "view from no where" but all views are a "view from somewhere."

in his novel The Manticore, Robertson Davies talks about the "view from elsewhere" which states that the best we can do is seek to embrace views besides our own. this is echoed my Parker Palmer in the statement "The truth is between us." meaning that truth is relational and exists solely through interaction and relationships with others and the wider world (nature, animals, etc).

so which is it? where do you fall? i see the merit in many of these views but fall more with Aristotle, Davies, and Palmer than the others. any views you can think to add?

The Times They Are A Change'n

I've spoken at times about postmodernism and how i fancy myself as part of this group. I'm reading a book right now that is really touching on some great themes and lays out our current context quite nicely. The book is Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy by Barry Taylor.



Taylor is concerned with three interwoven ideas: (1) the implosion of modernity and the rise of the postmodern/postsecular, (2) the spiritual condition of popular culture that signifies a return to God, and (3) a vision for Christianity in this current milieu and for the future.

We have largely been living in a world where Christianity hasn't wielded the power it once did, churches are in decline, more and more people are biblically and theologically illiterate, and the rise of "Secularism" have been cried about by many-a theologian (both conservative and liberal). Taylor, on the other hand, sees this as a good thing! it's like the chinese saying "With great challenge comes great opportunity."

Taylor sees that the western culture has largely taken the modernist pill, thinking everything can be rationalized and explained. Max Weber wrote about the "disenchantment of the world" saying that magic and mystery had been driven from the world by the dominance of bueraucracy. These are "Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart, this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved."

however, with the popularity of Harry Potter, Fight Club, The Celestine Prophecy, The Sixth Sense, Donnie Darko, and (my fav.) THE MATRIX shows that these have become the primary means of continuing the study of one's spiritual interested in the age of the democratization of the spirit. The Church has been left behind and the culture is fashioning its own form of spirituality and God-talk that Christianity must take seriously.

Rather than being cool, Christianity must be relevant, something i've been scream'n for a while on this blog. The main ways in which it can be so will be through an identity shift, a new typology for missional theology, and a new encoding of the Christian message, all of are in desperate need of imagination. The instillation of creativity from the pew and a higher rate of participation and congregational input.

Taylor writes, “The shift in times demands a new reiteration of the message, one that is a pertinent and timely iteration of the timeless Christ story for our cultural context.” Thankfully this iteration can come from both inside and outside the church as he asserts that “theology is no longer a specialized field to be left to those deemed qualified.” There is much encouragement for artists and lovers of art to get involved.


I'm totally into this book. Esp. how the new religious permutations "will lead to the emergence and advance of post-Newtonian chaotic-observer aware science." He also cites this Radiohead video as a metaphor for the reenchantment of the West, and i think this dude is right on!



LET'S GET CREATIVE AND CRAZY! LET'S GET RE-ENCHANTED WITH THE WORLD! WOOT!

The Five Minute Manifesto

There are no civilians. No neutral position. All action or inaction is for or against. There is a war going on for your mind.. if you are thinking, you are winning. Resist labels, deconstruct concepts, get to the praxis and groundings of every theory. If there is theory without practice, it is meaningless, if there is practice without theory, it is thoughtless. There is no race but the human race, no them; only us. Divisions are made by us into we into I. the individual can no longer stand as the sole unit of society, but how the individual fits into the larger whole.. for it is not who we are that defines us, but what we can do for others.

All free minds to the front, all free minds to the front! We are building a new society, you’re welcomed to share your gifts in building it. We need every man, woman, and child.

We’re taking back the world now… thanks. COEXIST.

Truth and Fact?

a recent discussion as well as some coincidental readings (some of which come from Barry Taylor's Entertainment Theology) have caused me to think about the nature and relationship of "truth" and "fact." many would argue that these and synonyms meaning the same thing. i don't think they are.

in his work Social and Cultural Dynamics, Pitirim A. Sorokin (founder of Dept. of Sociology at Harvard) developed a complex theory of cultural change that have important implications for this discussion. Sorokin is Russian and his life was largely marked by upheaval brought about by the communist revolution. the traditional "folk" truth was uprooted by the "objective, cold-reasoning of the state."

He states that there is a marked difference between how truth is dealt with between west and east. Russia has both verisons in conflict. there is the cultural conflict of the Sensate and the Ideational.

The Sensate mode is one in which material values dominate. Its focus is on mattters of efficiency and bureacracy. The Ideational is the opposite. Rather than being predominantly sensorially focused, it is more artistically inclined, understanding reality as super sensory. The Greek civilization, for instance, would fall into the ideational mode, given its focus on beauty, transcendent truth, and philosophy. the Roman Empire would by contrast be squarely Sensate, given it's commitment to dominance and its gift of organization and construction.

so in Roman language, descriptions would be based in the "hard facts" because engineers need exact figures to build aqueducts and forts and such. Greek language, there is more metaphor, allegory, and a tendency to exagreate to drive points home.

take a Western, Sensate mode of describe'n a BBQ: "i had a big party, 15 people showed up, there were 5 cars in my 3 car-capacity driveway, we cooked 3 full chickens and emptied 4 quarts of mashed potatoes, and it took 45 minutes to do the dishes which normally takes 15.” this is a western “Just the Facts Please” way of telling the story.

now consider an Eastern, Ideational way of conveying the same event: “i had HUGE party.. there had to have been 100 people there, cars were lined up and down the block, we ate a whole flock of chickens and ate enough mash potatoes that Idaho is now having to replant, and i used every dish in the house which took like 3 days to clean!” this way is loose with the “facts” but i’d argue you’d remember this story longer.

so we have the western "factual" model which would best be summed up by Thomas Aquinas' quote "Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of thing and intellect").

then we have the eastern "metaphoric" model, best articulated by Michael Lynch in a series of articles and in his 2009 book Truth as One and Many argues that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence. truth then is culturally understood to convey "another meaning than the facts or story presented."

another way to put it is through my advertising background. as a marketer, i studied demographics and found that it's a fact that the American Family is white, has 3.6 members, 2.4 pets, lives in the suburbs, has 2.4 vehicles, and has an median income of 50 to $75,000." (information from Hey Whipple Squeeze This) these are the facts but it doesn't hold the truth of the American family and one wouldn't be able to find this factual family no matter how long you searched for it.

so what i'm saying is that the modernist notions of reality are coming to an end. the east is meeting west and "Poetry will reach a superior dignity, it will become in the end what it was in the beginning-- the teacher of humanity." -Friedrich Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology.

IDENTITY! (?)

I love seminary! i get to hang out and talk God-talk all day long and get a TON of views backed up with personal experience and denominational doctrine. it's pretty cool! i'd say darn near heaven for someone who loves talking. God is truly bigger than what i think and i'm considering a lot of things i never had to before. from my political views to my philosophical and theological views. it can be scary for some, but i just absolutely love it.

Chris Eden sent me a great article and we had a discussion about it. The article was called "Are You A Christian Hipster?" and at first glance i was all about it!

then Chris pointed out that we pretty much love to label and categorize things, but that is largely on what we NOTICE and THAT is an entirely subjective exercise. The article proves a framework and it's flawed. heavily in some places. but i think it responds to our human need to label & categorize in the hopes of finding identity. our basic need is to belong and be affirmed.

Like i loooove most of the authors listed, i definately don't like anything labeled "Christian" before my music and movies, and i'm idealistic. I LOVE thinking and acting Catholic but have no respect for the institution of the church (patriarchy on crack). i don't have any tattoos and i don't smoke. but i WANT TO belong.. i just don't fit the mold.

and here's the secret... none of us do perfectly. we're individuals who want to be a community. we are finding that we can only establish our identity only if we're comparing ourselves to something else... i don't think you can define yourself without using a relationship. and here's what it's all about:

IDENTITY! I am apart from all these other slobs! just look at how i fashionably blend goodwill with Lucky and Gap clothes and put that with some Adidas sneaks and my iPod with a collection of bands NO ONE ELSE HAS!

i am me. and the sooner you recognize this the better off we'll be.... never mind the fact that a whole bunch of other people are doing the exact same thing and listening to the same bands just not in the order i have... just never mind that!

it's our American INDIVIDUALITY! and reliance on self that keeps butting up against our need to be in relation with one another. and the only way to get individuals into a group is through good marketing. at least.. that's the answer the church is going for (whether be fundie or liberal settings). and this too will fail. but it's how we're trying to frame the situation now.

so what's the answer?

Absolute Truth?

some recent posts i've had on facebook and other places concerning A.T.

Mac, a great philosopher and mentor from OU weighed in and said:

I'd question whether any truth is absolute. I mean metaphysically, there may be a truth out there, but given the limits of our empirical experience, the closest practical approximation of any truth we can attain is variable based on the accuracy (or lack thereof) of whatever is our most current knowledge. Or something like that...

My Sufi friend Ausaf, also from OU stated:

It seems you don't question the existence of absolute truth, just mankinds ability to learn absolute truth which I would agree with you about.

Absolute truth itself, in my opinion, must exist for the simple fact alone that if one was to say there is no absolute truth, that, in itself, would become the absolute truth and disprove itself. Or something like that.

it makes me reflect and think that maybe, just maybe, humanity’s greatest sin is to look for some sure and unassailable truth. craving for certainity, for an infallible authority will always lead to the “death” of our life with the Living God.

we make GOD the eternal immutable Truth and in turn make the scriptures immutable, omiscient, omnipotent, eternal and so on… does a disservice to the witness and revelation of both!

here's my absolute truth: i didn’t expect to be born… yet here i am. this is a result of massive eons of evolution, physics, chemistry, things unbeknownst to me and human wisdom, and not to be outdone, my mom having sex with my dad… ick! but anywho, here i am! somehow i’ve survived thus long… all of this is a gift.

we unwrap gifts, delight in gifts, live with gifts, and are grateful for gifts… authority seldom prompts gratitude. sometimes we need tools in opening a hard to get at package. scripture does that for me but it’s not the primary tool, it just tells me how others have tried to unwrap their gifts and what they expected to find inside. it's all part of the journey back to a God that was ever present yet ever absent.

in response, Brother Eden stated:

I disagree - I think (one of) humanity's greatest endeavors IS to look for sure and unassailable truths. It's what makes us tick sometimes, isn't it? Let's go find them (surely there are some) for the betterment of mankind and the glory of God's creation. But...perhaps the sin is to argue that POV is truth, to hold onto it like POV is salvation.

Sally concured and stated:

Yes! POV assumes that the place where POV originates, human reason, is paramount. Can our salvation be based on that?

i'm not doubting that there's Absolute Truth, i'm doubting humanity's ability to understand it. even Jesus spoke of the Kingdom is metaphor and allegory.. saying "The Kingdom of God is like..."

we have eyes that don't see the full spectrum.. we have ears that can't hear dark matter.. what makes us think we have a brain that can comprehend absolute truth?

that doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue AT... yet we must realize that when we think we've found one.. that it might not be applicable to all situations. thou shalt not steal only works if you're not starve'n, although it's generally a good rule to follow. Love your neighbor as yourself and love God with all your heart, mind, and soul... those are pretty darn close to AT as i can see.

as Brighteyes sang "IF you swear that there's no truth and who cares, how come you say it like you're right?"

long post... but what are your thoughts on this subject? if you hold absolute truth, what is it? here is mine:

Bias & Culture

pulling largely from a lecture given by Nestor Medina here at LTS, i think it's time to talk about Bias and Culture.

lots of talk about culture, but how best can we define it?

there's many ways, i'll attempt to define it here and then discuss what it means to COEXIST.

Culture is 1. a sum total of rules that shape belief, communication, and thinking, 2. refers to particular ways of thinking, acting, and organizing aspects of housing, technology, art, family dynamics, and science, 3. gives coherence and totality in relation to the rest of the world and is transmitted from one generation to the next.

or as my Giradian buddy Bryce would define it: culture is what keeps you from retributively killing people.

example of two cultures coming together: A Danish man and Egyptian man go to play a game of billards. When asked (by a third party) how good they are at billards the Dane replies "I've played before" and the Egyptian replies "I'm very good at this game." Both exhibit their culture... Danish culture values humility where Egyptian culture values embellishment. Imagine the surprise and potential conflict when the Dane throughly thrashes the Egyptian.

now based on these definitions and this understanding of "culture" i would say that one cannot get outside of one's cultural bias. here are some ways of thinking about culture historically in terms of one's "Holy Scriptures" according to the Medina lecture:

Acculturation: Taking a book from another culture and placing it in one's own: i.e. the Bible is Angelo (although it was written by the Hebrews amid their pressures from Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman Cultures). or as Yael pointed out, the Christians claiming the Torah as THEIRS but largely ignoring and dismissing it.

Enculturation: Our way of thinking is the best! The Qu'ran is Arabic therefore one must be Arabic to be Muslim or the Gospel is Angelo Culture, therefore one must become Angelo to be Christian. This is a false assumption and we've seen the effects on the world in missionaries and Colonial though processes.

Inculturation: Use resonate images to convert other cultures. You guys believe in charity? WE DO TOO! Here's where our scriptures are doing what y'all already are. This is apologetics and falsely thinks that the scripture can be removed from the culture.

Interculturation: Naming own culture specifically and seeing the positives and negatives. i believe this is the best way. when we talk about things, it's best to say "As a white, progressive Christian i see this issue this way" or "As an atheist woman" or "as a Muslim from Egypt" here it helps either party figure out how best to frame the interaction and the friction that occurs from both parties involved.

this is important to do as we're making assumptions about the other... what we should do is to name our assumptions from the get go, question the person we are in dialogue with, and let the "other" fill in their own blanks. for example, when coming to me and knowing that i'm a christian, don't think i'm a creationist, or think the Bible is THE word of GOD, or that i send other faiths to hell. i don't hold either belief as i believe in evolution and that the word of God is in the Bible amid the cultural bias and baggage.