exploring my mind
1. The English language can be used rather imprecisely at times. I just got an e-mail in my spam folder titled “hot sex with viagra pills”. There are at least two meanings. Why anyone would want to have sexual relations with some pills is beyond me.
2. I shall one day title my memoir “The Thin Line Between Genius and Idiot”. I haven’t decided on a subtitle yet.
3. I don’t care who you are, if you are posting ads in the “casual encounters” section of craigslist, you are messed up. I’d advise you to check out your local craigslist for examples, but this pretends to be a blog appropriate for the whole family.
4. How can one be idealistic without being ideological? Read the second paragraph of this link and please let me know.
5. Three reflections: Horizon Air serves free microbrews and local wines and I would suggest taking advantage of that; the morbidly obese should be required to buy at least two seats; and the Newark Airport train system is not all that it is cracked up to be.
6. If a book isn’t actually required for a class then it shouldn’t say “required” on the little tag in the bookstore. The only bright spot is that I didn’t buy them from our bookstore, I bought them used online. Take that Cokesbury!
7. It is fun to watch my fine friends from the South deal with the cold.
8. If you feel like part of your job in life is to play amateur psychologist, I recommend you stop while you still have people in your life who willingly speak to you.
9. It’s bad form to require your underlings to watch a video recording of a lecture by a prolific speaker and then have the speaker give you a shout out in the first five minutes. It causes your underlings to think that you had ulterior motives for requiring this video when this speaker probably gives the same talk multiple times per week.
10. allamericanspeakers.com can provide hours of entertainment. I personally prefer to go to the cheaper speakers (who still charge $5,000 plus expenses) and wonder who would possibly pay to hear some of them.
cheers!
1. What does it say about my mental state that all I feel like doing is watching old Woody Allen movies and listening to Warren Zevon?
2. There is more to crisis management than burying people with e-mails about the crisis.
3. I can scarcely imagine what line workers in the auto industry are going through right now, but “God’s bailout” has nothing to do with their industry.
4. Being the only person that visits someone in the hospital sucks for both of us.
5. Number four makes theology papers seem totally irrelevant.
6. Profound thought that escapes some people: I can’t call you if I don’t have your phone number.
7. Finally, a wall calendar I can share with my Mormon friends!
8. So today this retired guy in front of me in the checkout line at the grocery store had 17 cans of corn in the bottom of his cart. I could tell that he was a seasoned purchaser of large quantities of canned goods. He kept inquiring if the cashier wanted to count and she kept saying it was fine. He was insistent. His wife just wanted a bunch of plastic bags to put the corn in. I could tell that they have had an exciting life together.
9. I don’t watch NBC at 10:00pm now and it looks like I won’t be any time soon. I’d rather listen to Hall and/or Oates five hours a week.
10. My last week on the east coast for 2008…
11. …and Christmas begins:
1. Do you remember the episode of Seinfeld in which James Spader guest stars and as part of his 12-step program is making amends to people and refuses to apologize to George for saying that George stretched out the neck hole on his sweater? It helped me be closer to correct during a discussion of Alcoholics Anonymous this evening. It pays to watch television.
2. Which brings me to a two-fer. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is hilarious; Family Guy has become a vapid shell of its former self.
3. I was part of a discussion with another person, a theological student, who doesn’t seem to believe that God has a will or a plan for anything. No critique implied here, just thought I’d throw that out there and let you chew on it.
4. The presence of any pedagogical gifts or abilities often has nothing to do with becoming a professor.
5. Contrary to the rantings of Susan Tompor, a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, Detroit isn’t any dirtier a word and no one hates Detroit anymore than they did before. You can’t self-identify as the home of the U.S. auto industry, have every political representative of the area help push it off the precipice, and then whine that everyone hates you when we don’t want to give you billions after billions upon billions of dollars. I mean, she bought a 1997 Eagle Vision, how smart can she be?
6. Many corporations and die-hard capitalists whine about government not getting out of the way and not getting off their backs. But try not bailing one of them out or removing their subsidy or corporate welfare? Good luck not hearing them whine louder than a three year-old at bath time.
7. I don’t care if Don Wakamatsu proves to be a good manager of the Mariners or not, but it is a lot of fun to say his name.
8. I really enjoy using the phrase: (name or pronoun) couldn’t (verb) their way out of a paper bag. If I am simply making a statement about their lack of intelligence it goes: (name or pronoun) couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag with a map. And then sometimes I say sack instead of bag.
9. So far, every time I have titled a blog entry with “part one” I have never written subsequent parts. Will that change? I don’t know.
10. IKEA boxes quickly disintegrate during brief exposure to torrential downpours.
11. Brilliant plan to make lots of money: form football team consisting entirely of people over 80 years old whose only activity is ranting about current events and comparing them to former eras, challenge the University of Washington football team to a game, bet heavily on the geezers, say hello to easy street! (Huskies: 0-10. Average margin of defeat: 26 pts.)
12. This might be the worst post I have ever written, which is probably why it has been so long since I have posted. I forced myself to post tonight. But I am publishing this because I don’t want the time to be a complete waste. Now I know how the writers of The Facts of Life must have felt each week.
Do you have a favorite worst post on this blog? Add your thoughts in the comments!
The effects of racism in this country and around the world can be both bold and subtle, overt and implicit, intensely personal and rabidly systemic. Having not been discriminated based on my race, I really couldn’t begin to perceive the effects that racism has on a person’s experience of life. I don’t think I am in the position of being able to overstate the effects of racism. The consequences are complex and pervasive.
In perhaps my narrow view of life, I would say that the causes are very simple. Some people are racists out of a desire to exploit and subjugate and some people are racists out of fear of the other. I will leave the former alone except to say that such people are diabolical and should be dealt with rather harshly. In this age though, I think the latter group, people who are racists out of fear of the other are the larger group. Having known plenty of bigots of various natures and kinds in my day, I think I can personally attest to the simplicity of their racism. I have been told things to the affect that a person of a certain race scares them because of how they dress, that they had a bad experience with someone of a certain race as a child, that being racist was the way they were raised, and the whole “angry white man” schtick where they hate non-whites because persons of color somehow stole their job, etc.. It’s all bullshit.
I may be irretrievably crazy and absolutely wrong, but I will stick with this: while the consequences and implications of racism are complex, systemic, and evil, and I just can’t know what growing up in a place that hates me because of my race does to a person, I firmly think that the “why” behind an individual’s rationale for being racist (whether they consider themselves racist or not) is ridiculously simple because it is logically improbable. While it might be deeply ingrained, it is ludicrous and they can’t explain it plausibly.
We shouldn’t try to brush racism to the side. It is an important issue. But the reasons an individual has for being racist are plainly idiotic. But as loving people in this world, we need to help each other grow in love whenever we can. Listen and respond, but don’t tolerate. Only when we are opened to the wider world do we accept it. My prayer is that I may be both the giver and receiver of such wisdom.
As a little warm-up for the coming theological season, I read Scot McKnight’s brief tome “A Community Called Atonement”. The chapters are short and he tries to avoid getting bogged down in jargon while still producing a serious theological work. This is not a narrative-driven work but an attempt to cover a lot of ground quickly and still say something. He manages to do this well, but I found it a touch slow moving even though the work is short (about 150 pages).
I would posit that the key contribution McKnight makes to the discussion about atonement theologies is that they are best seen as metaphors. We cannot know the full truth of the universe or of God (we do not have direct knowledge of all that God knows, for this would make us omniscient) and thus we must speak of God and the work of God indirectly and descriptively – that is to say, metaphorically. We can then jaunt through a number of metaphors for atonement – penal substitution, Christus Victor, ransom, satisfaction, recapitulation, moral influence. Some of these metaphors overlap to the point that they are nearly synonymous. McKnight spends a good chunk of space in a couple places defending the metaphor of penal substitution and I would posit that while he does not say this explicitly that he tends to favor the penal substitution and Christus Victor metaphors.
McKnight’s overarching aim is to show the usefulness of each of the major atonement theologies (although he only devotes a couple of paragraphs to Abelard’s moral influence theory) and consistently harkens to metaphor of golf clubs in a golf bag to say that we need each of them for specific contexts. One would not wisely use a 3-iron on the green or a putter off of the tee and neither should one atonement theology bear the whole burden.
In the final section, McKnight discusses the praxis of atonement. McKnight takes atonement beyond the theoretical, metaphorical, and individual and places it in the context of a lived faith. He invites the reader into a way of living out atonement by engaging others with the message of reconciliation and engaging the community and the world. This is an atonement that seeks to heal the wounds not only between the individual and God, but also between the individual and others and the world. This is primarily done through a community that is drawn into fellowship with the Trinity, creates healing and restorative relationships with each other (justice), and that seeks redemption with all (missional).
This “emergent” work falls into line with creating a “generous othodoxy”. McKnight attempts to identify the wheat in each metaphor of atonement and toss out the chaff. Whether this is good or wise in a theologically systematic way is debatable. However, he is attempting to write an accessible theology of atonement and I think he achieves his goal. I was refreshed by his approach and enjoyed reading the book. Ultimately, our challenge is to seek to be in union with God in Christ so that the kingdom of God is lived out on earth. Not diagnose and denounce every flaw in the world or attempt to predict the rapture and such, but to live and promote a community headed by Christ that seeks to carry out his mission. This book is an attempt to help that along.
I was toiling away yesterday in an attempt to organize our fine library’s storage areas. Here are some fun things I ran across that broke up the excitement.
Who knew the Adventists thought David Koresh was such a Bible-wielding, Rambo-esque badass?
I’ll pass on being updated concerning this new religious movement.
This says more than words can express.
The really sad part is that this isn’t from 1992, it is from 2004.
She looks so demented that I thought she deserved a close-up. God bless her.
As I was sitting on the porch of my dormitory here at Princeton Theological Seminary enjoying a relaxing evening with my compatriots, I was struck be a conversation some folks were having about postmodernism, particularly as it pertains to issues of faith and theology. The chatter was a touch long-winded, a tad self-deluding, but very thoughtful and genuine. There were great pains taken to speak about postmodernism without defining it or identifying anyone who might be postmodern. I figured I could actually do some defining and be quick about it.
Postmodernism is a movement or theory or what-have-you with a tortured past chiefly springing from Western European disillusionment following the Second World War. It stands largely as a reaction to modernism – the central premise of which is that all truth and knowledge is only (or at least, best) accessed through the tools of scientific inquiry with the goal of rationalization.
In my view, postmodernism as it pertains to faith seeks to throw off the confines of a strict rationalism and seeks to bring in all the tools of the human experience into interpreting and viewing the world. Science is not the only way – the critical tools of art, literature, etc. are employed. The experience of the whole person is also brought into play; mind, body, and soul. Beyond the individual, postmodernism places emphasis on the contextual interpretations of diverse communities. Diverse both in the concrete situation of the group and the construction of the group. These communities tend to be valued over formal structures.
There…my 20 minutes of thinking and writing about postmodernism. Trust me, it didn’t take you as long to read this as it took me to listen on the porch. It was a great conversation, but sometimes brevity must have a response.
cheers
It may only be Saturday night and thus this post is a tad premature, but when your weekend has been filled with high school graduation parties and reffing high school summer league basketball you have the chance to observe things. I observed the following:
- some high school students from Coeur d’Alene have anger management issues
- people like to bullshit you at parties and want them to contact you, even though you have no readily available means of contacting them and they do not proffer one
- there is a certain segment of the population to whom driving directions mean very little
- particular populations are under the impression that if they, as a grown adult, jump around and have a little hissy fit that somehow they will get their way
- I was ill today and didn’t manage to make it to Rogers High School on the first try either time
- the dog only seems to eat his food when specifically told to do so. Seriously, I have taken to telling him, “Go eat your food,” and occasionally pointing out his food dish and he tends to begin eating. Obviously, his already rather weak mental capacities have diminished further since he passed a decade.
- some impending family gatherings make me feel like driving to the coast, renting a decent-sized ocean-going vessel, setting course for the Arctic, making a sign that says “Polar Bear Food”, placing aforementioned sign around my neck, wander onto a sheet of ice, and wait to become an afternoon snack.
- I walked on the softest carpet ever today
- I accept friend requests on Facebook from people with whom I have mutual friends because I am afraid that I am supposed to know them
- there are a lot of truly nice people out there that I would never know had I not officiated basketball this year, which leads to the next observation…
- caring for people isn’t that hard
- some churches are afraid of accepting credit cards at fundraisers
- I like Hillary Clinton more now that the prospect of having to listen to her and her cronies diminishes every second
- if someone asks me to do a pepper spray training, I will decline and employ amusing obscenities
- some men are particularly attracted to women of certain national heritages
- I like chocolate and i like fountains, but many chocolate fountains are rather silly
- if I could pattern my career trajectory after anyone, it would be Vin Scully. Longevity, class, and excellence. Plus, I really enjoy listening to him call a game.
- I wish I could see all my friends all the time…except they would probably grow tired of me really quickly (or vice versa)
- I enjoy it when the Yankees come back to win a game
I wonder what Sunday will be like…
