A more tender moment

My heart broke as I read the headline Terri Schiavo Dies After Bitter Legal Battle. Do I have a stance on this issue. . .probably but that's not really my point right now. So many of us I think have taken sides and whether they be political or moral or whatever I think some of us missed the fact that there were at least 4 or 5 people who's lives have been drastically changed in the past few months. As much as I would love to pretend that I'm an "intellectual-non-emotional-rationalist" I'm not. And when I saw the pictures this morning I cried a bit. I cry for Terri, who may or may not be awake for it all, but fact is she starved to death. I cry for her parents who had to watch their daughter go through all of this and literally watch her die. I cry for her husband who seems to be so removed from true love and reality. And I cry for humanity who I'm not sure has acted much like the "humanity" that I have idealized should. So. . . I end with. . . .I don't know. I hurt. . .I hurt a lot.

I'm a Commie

Ok I so I’ve been told that I’m not being practical enough in my blog. That it’s too heady and I’m not going to make any change by talking about stuff like that. So I’m going to move to another issue.

In class the other day we were discussing Marxism and how Marx got to his systems, things of that nature. It was brought up that Wal-Mart throws away a ton of food that spoils a day (can I use the actual name of a store?), and no one gets to eat it, while there are starving people in Marion. Then a student had the gall to say “Well they should have bought less then, because if you give it away people will never pay for it” and then others chimed in with witty metaphors like giving men fish instead of teaching them, and how bears won’t hunt if they are fed by people, and other such rubbish.

I finally snapped (and for that I’d like to apologize I did lose my cool a bit) and here is my response
“I don’t care what political or economic system you are wedded to, or whether you hate capitalism or communism, free market or socialism, the fact is people are dying all over the world. Maybe the church should buy the oranges and give them away, maybe something else, I don’t know how exactly it needs to be fixed, but we can’t sit around and say ‘well they are lazy so they don’t get food’ or whatever. That’s crap. If we have come to the point in the church that we let ourselves get caught up in politics so much that we can’t help people, we’re sad. Marx needed to slap us in the face and say, there are people who are sick and dying and are that way because of rich, fat, and happy Christians. Christ didn’t tell us to rehab people, or to train them, or to help them hunt.” (side note, I do think as a whole we should help change people and not just give them food, yet that’s not the point) “If you can show me Biblically or from the early church that we should do something like that then fine, but they didn’t have a system set up. I don’t completely know how to fix it, all that I know is Christ told me to feed them and clothe them and to the best of my ability I’m going to do it.”

Does this mean I’m voting Democrat next election? No! Does it mean I’m a communist? No. (Although I do think in a Christian society where all people are Christians a form of this would work best) All I’m saying is we are commanded by Christ to do something, and I’m not sure the Greed of Capitalism is helping us do that. There I’ve said it. Capitalism is based on others and my own greed. And I’ve fallen in the trap as much as other people.
One pastor once told his congregation that if all of them were on welfare (this was a fairly well to do church) and they each tithed their 10% then the church would be able to do all of their ministries (including food pantries and clothing centers) better and with more money. Meaning no one was sharing with the others. We’re greedy person, that’s really what it comes down to.

God in the box 2

Ok so the topic today is a bit of a recount of the last one. In Christology we are dealing with the theandric union of Christ. How the Human nature and Divine nature are combined as one person. Eventually it got to the point that we said “it’s a mystery” and we retreat into the cave of faith.

My modern mind and postmodern leanings are in total conflict on this. I’ve found it difficult to be a child of the end of modernity, which has been flung into the mess of postmodernism, and as I come out of the cave my eyes hurt (Plato’s cave not the before mentioned cave of faith). I realize that the fall of how much of this systematic theology is purely putting God in my box, and how much of it is trying to love and worship God by learning as much about him as I can. If modernity has placed rational and knowledge on a pedestal then has postmodernity shot it down completely?

Why can I not try to understand God? Did he create my reason? Or did that come after the fall? Does God work with us, through councils and creeds, or are these perversions that should be looked at with caution, distrust, and maybe even disdain?
My love of tradition cannot let me throw out these, and perhaps Postmodernity is not really asking me to, but rather to examine the very muddy, dirty, dare I say . . . (no I won’t say it) water and look for the baby who has been laying somewhere in there. We cannot throw out the baby (whatever this metaphorical baby ends up containing is yet to be completely determined), along with the water, or we have abandoned that which much of our foundation has been set upon.

God in the box

During our senior capstone philosophy class (for some reason labeled the philosophy of being a world changer. . . so we now just call it senior capstone class) we started discussing what propositional truths we would keep in the church. As Post-modernity starts to knock down one after the other. One person said that God is at the top holding onto the church and as we knock down these truths from the bottom (Jenga style if you will) then God still holds it.

Although I agree to an extent, God is obviously holding the church from the top and we don’t have to have everything put together down here, I still think that there is at least one truth we have to hold to, and I’d like to grab a few on the way.

Do we really think that if we deny the resurrection of Christ as a truth that has to be held to keep the church going that we could still just plug away. No I don’t think we have to understand the trinity or really comprehend Christ’s complete duality, but if there is no duality if we just make Christ some “mystery which we don’t understand” I truly believe this undermines Biblical Christianity.

We love new fads and anything that makes us look new and smart, and I’m afraid that we have already started to cling to this new “post-modern” thing. We chastise others for being so wedded to modernity and turn around and do the same thing. The Church obviously needs to change and flow to stay relevant to its culture, but how far are we willing to do this? And at what cost? What are we willing to sacrifice to post modernity, to make us relevant, and why can’t we learn from the mistakes of the past?

Conforming

So here I am. Blogging. I guess I'm conforming. Dr. Drury says I should do this to improve my writing. Kevin says it makes you more socially conscience or something like that, Mike says it will be therapeutic for me. I don't know if any of these are correct, but I'm willing to take a stab at it. All in all I can't imagine it doing much harm (as I say that I am thinking of future e-mails from ticked off people). So we'll see how it works out. Give me some time and sooner or later I may get this thing down.