What can we actually get out of reading the more "historically orientated" parts of the Bible? The only things I've gleened really is that 1. God is relavent in history 2. It is a prefiguration of the salvation given to us by Jesus, meaning the Israelites screwed up, God got them out of the screw up 3. Humanity really hasn't changed all that much in the last 3-4,000 years 4. Sometimes bad things happen, life keeps happening (exile, exodus, destruction of the first temple etc)
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Ashcroft has some pipes on him
He actually has a good voice. I'm not so sure I like the lyrics so much, but then again I'm just not a rhyming kind of guy.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
THe hunting of the president
Looks like another good movie out there. Morgan Freeman narrates. Looks really good!
The ELCA's social statement on Sexuality again
The reason I re-post this is that some people seemed to have thought this to be only on the "gay issue" when in fact on tons of stuff.
At any rate check it out.
At any rate check it out.
fahrenheit 911 trailer is out!
Moore is up to his usual cute tricks. F911 will open on the 25th of this month! I wonder if it will play in Cheyenne? Here is hoping.
Peace,
Chris
Peace,
Chris
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Wee, finished 2 tests
I won't have to do Hebrew again for another 3 years (though I hope to do some stuff on my own, I'm going to see if I can teach a highschool english class about Midrash!). Also I did a test in Martyrdom. All I have left is a paper about the power shift that takes place when a martyrdom occurs, and 2 small essays for my radicalism class. I think I will take the topics, "what brought about radicalism in the 60's" and "Who has been more influential in the history of American radicalism in the twentieth century, Karl Marx or Emma Goldman?"
D+D theological questions
The Questions
1. Is Satan “redeemable”?
2. Why do we have monogamous relationships? What is the spiritual significance? Does it have anything to do with monotheism?
3. How does Christianity deal with Auschwitz? How do you deal with Auschwitz?
4. Is there a single essence to God? That is, can we in the end say “God is Love or God is spirit?” On one hand it is not good to “box in God” but on the other hand is a “freeform” God the way to go?
5. How should church leaders be chosen?
6. Forsake everything for God. Question being are there people/things that by forsaking them for God you are in fact forsaking God?
7. What has value?
1. Is Satan “redeemable”?
2. Why do we have monogamous relationships? What is the spiritual significance? Does it have anything to do with monotheism?
3. How does Christianity deal with Auschwitz? How do you deal with Auschwitz?
4. Is there a single essence to God? That is, can we in the end say “God is Love or God is spirit?” On one hand it is not good to “box in God” but on the other hand is a “freeform” God the way to go?
5. How should church leaders be chosen?
6. Forsake everything for God. Question being are there people/things that by forsaking them for God you are in fact forsaking God?
7. What has value?
Monday, May 31, 2004
I read the ELCA statement
It was pretty short. Seemed pretty common sense for the most part. One thing I did think was kind of funny was that they didn't use scripture to condemn prostitution, yet they used scripture to justify most of their other policies. Curious.
Anyways, here is the conclusion.
The Sustaining Power of God's Grace
As Lutheran Christians, we seek God's will for sexual expression while also keeping the grace of God at the heart of our common life. This means undertaking all of our commitments to each other -- including sexual relationships -- with a sense of our life as a gift, with God's help to keep our promises, and with a deep sense of the sin that persists. The mercies of God continually sustain and undercut any simple division of the righteous from the unrighteous (Rom. 1:18 - 3:20).
On some matters of sexuality, there are strong and continuing differences among us. As we discuss areas where we differ, the power of the Holy Spirit can guide and unite us. Trust in the Gospel brings together people whose differences over sexuality ought not be a basis for division. We pray for the grace to avoid unfair judgment of those with whom we differ, the patience to listen to those with whom we disagree, and the love to reach out to those from whom we may be divided.
To a world obsessed with sexual self-fulfillment, divided by differences over sexuality, and weary of how sexuality is abused, the message of the grace of God lightens our burdens, lifts our spirits, renews our commitments, and reminds us of the deepest basis for mutual respect -- the love of God we have in Jesus Christ.
Anyways, here is the conclusion.
The Sustaining Power of God's Grace
As Lutheran Christians, we seek God's will for sexual expression while also keeping the grace of God at the heart of our common life. This means undertaking all of our commitments to each other -- including sexual relationships -- with a sense of our life as a gift, with God's help to keep our promises, and with a deep sense of the sin that persists. The mercies of God continually sustain and undercut any simple division of the righteous from the unrighteous (Rom. 1:18 - 3:20).
On some matters of sexuality, there are strong and continuing differences among us. As we discuss areas where we differ, the power of the Holy Spirit can guide and unite us. Trust in the Gospel brings together people whose differences over sexuality ought not be a basis for division. We pray for the grace to avoid unfair judgment of those with whom we differ, the patience to listen to those with whom we disagree, and the love to reach out to those from whom we may be divided.
To a world obsessed with sexual self-fulfillment, divided by differences over sexuality, and weary of how sexuality is abused, the message of the grace of God lightens our burdens, lifts our spirits, renews our commitments, and reminds us of the deepest basis for mutual respect -- the love of God we have in Jesus Christ.
ELCA's common convictions on Human Sexuality
Haven't looked at this yet. If you want a partial review click here.
Yarg, I'm going to miss Eugene
I went for another walk. Man, so green.
Well, I've reread the martrydoms of Ali and Husayn to death (pun intended) and I'm now reviewing the first 3 chapters of Song of Songs for a test on Wednesday. I might start writing on another final, we'll see.
Peace,
Chris
Well, I've reread the martrydoms of Ali and Husayn to death (pun intended) and I'm now reviewing the first 3 chapters of Song of Songs for a test on Wednesday. I might start writing on another final, we'll see.
Peace,
Chris
A pretty good 4 day weekend for me
Yesterday I finished one of my finals, rewriting a short story for Creative Writing. Day before that I wrote the whole Judges 4 vs Judges 5 paper. I took a long walk through Eugene yesterday. I'm going to miss this place over the summer. I'm going to reread a couple of martyrdoms today, and maybe get started with writing another final.
I've been thinking, I'd like to see "Shrek 2" sometime but I don't have a car. Maybe I'll do that when I get back to Cheyenne.
Peace,
Chris
I've been thinking, I'd like to see "Shrek 2" sometime but I don't have a car. Maybe I'll do that when I get back to Cheyenne.
Peace,
Chris
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Quotes from Zorba
A little bit about Zorba the Greek. It seems to be a book critiquing deconstructionalisms (kind of an oxymoron critiquing the idea of the critique). I think it is also pointing out the fact that Buddhism is no more intellectually sound than western ideas. I’m about half way through, I’ll put a second batch of quotes up sometime this summer.
Zorba the Greek (by Nikos Kazantzakis) Quotes:
“I stretched out my arm; I, too, felt like having a smoke. I took my pipe. I looked at it with emotion. It was a big and precious one, “Made in England.” It was a present from my friend- the one who had geyish-green eyes and slender fingers. That was abroad, years ago. He had finished his studies and was leaving that evening for Greece. “Give up cigarettes,” he said. “You light one, you smoke half of it and throw the rest away. Your love only lasts a minute. It’s disgraceful. You’d better take up a pipe. It’s like a faithful spouse. When you go home, it’ll be there, quietly waiting for you. You’ll light it, you’ll watch the smoke rising in the air and you’ll think of me!”
“Young people are cruel beasts, they’re inhuman, they don’t understand.”
“No. Love may be the most intense joy on earth. It may be. But, now I see that bronze hand, I want to escape.”
“I endeavored to lead a different type of life, to interest myself in practical work, to know and love the human material which had fallen into my hands, to feel the long-wished-for joy of no longer having to deal with words but with living men.”
“When the boss is hard, the men respect him, they work. When the boss is soft, they leave it all to him, and have an easy time. Get it?”
“What were we saying the day before yesterday, boss? You were saying you wanted to open the people’s eyes. All right, you just go and open old uncle Anagnosti’s eyes for him! You saw his wife had to behave before him, waiting for his orders, like a dog begging. Just go now and teach them that women have equal rights with men, and that it’s cruel to eat a piece of the pig while the pig’s still raw and groaning in front of you, and that it’s simply lunacy to give thanks to God because he’s got everything while you’re starving to death! What good’ll that poor devil Anagnosti get out of all your explanatory humbug? You’d only cause him a lot of bother. And what’d old mother Anagnosti get out of it? The fat would be in the fire: family rows would start, the hen would want to be cock, the couple would just have a good set-to and make their feathers fly…! Let people be, boss; don’t open their eyes. And supposing you did, what’d they see? Their misery! L:eave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!”
“We educated people are just empty headed birds of the air.”
“I was happy, I knew that . While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had been. But on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness and knew I was happy.”
“I’m white on top already, boss, and my teeth are getting loose. I’ve no time to lose. You’re young, you can still afford to be patient. I can’t. But I do declare, the older I get the wilder I become! Don’t let anyone tell me old age steadies a man! Nor that when he sees death coming he stretches out his neck and says: Cut off my head, please, so that I can go to heaven! The longer I live, the more I rebel. I’m not going to give in; I want t o conquer the world.”
“Live is trouble,” Zorba continued. “Death, no. To live—do you know what I mean? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”
“I still said nothing. I knew Zorba was right, I knew it, but I di not dare. My life had got on the wrong track, and my contract with men had become now a mere soliloquy. I had fallen so low that, if I had had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love, I should have chosen the book.”
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them.”
“In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”
“All these things which had formerly so fascinated me appeared this morning to be no more than cerebral acrobatics and refined charlatanism! That is how it always is at the decline of a civilization. That is how man’s anguish ends—in masterly conjuring tricks: pure poetry, pure music, pure thought. The last man—who had freed himself from all belief, from all illusions and had nothing more to expect or to fear—sees the clay of which he is made reduced to spirit, and this spirit has no soil left for its roots, from which to draw its sap. The last man has emptied himself; no more seed, no more excrement, no more blood. Everything having turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, the last man goes even further: he sits in hs utter solitude and decomposes the music into mute, mathematical equations.”
“You’re young,” he said smiling at me; “don’t listen to the old. If the world did heed them, it would rush headlong to its destruction. If a widow crosses your path, get hold of her! Get married, have children, don’t hesitate! Troubles were made for young men!”
“As a child, then, I had almost fallen into the well. When grown up, I nearly fell into the word “eternity,” and its quite number of other words too—“love” “hope” “country” “God.” As each word was conquered and left behind, I had the feeling that I had escaped a danger and made some progress. But no, I was only changing words and calling it deliverance. And there I had been, for the last two years, hanging over the edge of the word “Buddha.”
Zorba the Greek (by Nikos Kazantzakis) Quotes:
“I stretched out my arm; I, too, felt like having a smoke. I took my pipe. I looked at it with emotion. It was a big and precious one, “Made in England.” It was a present from my friend- the one who had geyish-green eyes and slender fingers. That was abroad, years ago. He had finished his studies and was leaving that evening for Greece. “Give up cigarettes,” he said. “You light one, you smoke half of it and throw the rest away. Your love only lasts a minute. It’s disgraceful. You’d better take up a pipe. It’s like a faithful spouse. When you go home, it’ll be there, quietly waiting for you. You’ll light it, you’ll watch the smoke rising in the air and you’ll think of me!”
“Young people are cruel beasts, they’re inhuman, they don’t understand.”
“No. Love may be the most intense joy on earth. It may be. But, now I see that bronze hand, I want to escape.”
“I endeavored to lead a different type of life, to interest myself in practical work, to know and love the human material which had fallen into my hands, to feel the long-wished-for joy of no longer having to deal with words but with living men.”
“When the boss is hard, the men respect him, they work. When the boss is soft, they leave it all to him, and have an easy time. Get it?”
“What were we saying the day before yesterday, boss? You were saying you wanted to open the people’s eyes. All right, you just go and open old uncle Anagnosti’s eyes for him! You saw his wife had to behave before him, waiting for his orders, like a dog begging. Just go now and teach them that women have equal rights with men, and that it’s cruel to eat a piece of the pig while the pig’s still raw and groaning in front of you, and that it’s simply lunacy to give thanks to God because he’s got everything while you’re starving to death! What good’ll that poor devil Anagnosti get out of all your explanatory humbug? You’d only cause him a lot of bother. And what’d old mother Anagnosti get out of it? The fat would be in the fire: family rows would start, the hen would want to be cock, the couple would just have a good set-to and make their feathers fly…! Let people be, boss; don’t open their eyes. And supposing you did, what’d they see? Their misery! L:eave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!”
“We educated people are just empty headed birds of the air.”
“I was happy, I knew that . While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had been. But on this Cretan coast I was experiencing happiness and knew I was happy.”
“I’m white on top already, boss, and my teeth are getting loose. I’ve no time to lose. You’re young, you can still afford to be patient. I can’t. But I do declare, the older I get the wilder I become! Don’t let anyone tell me old age steadies a man! Nor that when he sees death coming he stretches out his neck and says: Cut off my head, please, so that I can go to heaven! The longer I live, the more I rebel. I’m not going to give in; I want t o conquer the world.”
“Live is trouble,” Zorba continued. “Death, no. To live—do you know what I mean? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”
“I still said nothing. I knew Zorba was right, I knew it, but I di not dare. My life had got on the wrong track, and my contract with men had become now a mere soliloquy. I had fallen so low that, if I had had to choose between falling in love with a woman and reading a book about love, I should have chosen the book.”
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them.”
“In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”
“All these things which had formerly so fascinated me appeared this morning to be no more than cerebral acrobatics and refined charlatanism! That is how it always is at the decline of a civilization. That is how man’s anguish ends—in masterly conjuring tricks: pure poetry, pure music, pure thought. The last man—who had freed himself from all belief, from all illusions and had nothing more to expect or to fear—sees the clay of which he is made reduced to spirit, and this spirit has no soil left for its roots, from which to draw its sap. The last man has emptied himself; no more seed, no more excrement, no more blood. Everything having turned into words, every set of words into musical jugglery, the last man goes even further: he sits in hs utter solitude and decomposes the music into mute, mathematical equations.”
“You’re young,” he said smiling at me; “don’t listen to the old. If the world did heed them, it would rush headlong to its destruction. If a widow crosses your path, get hold of her! Get married, have children, don’t hesitate! Troubles were made for young men!”
“As a child, then, I had almost fallen into the well. When grown up, I nearly fell into the word “eternity,” and its quite number of other words too—“love” “hope” “country” “God.” As each word was conquered and left behind, I had the feeling that I had escaped a danger and made some progress. But no, I was only changing words and calling it deliverance. And there I had been, for the last two years, hanging over the edge of the word “Buddha.”
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