Hat tip to Here We Stand.
Interesting, the president of Iran seems to be a pluralist, in that he thinks he and Bush worship the same God. He asks Bush a lot of questions, talks some about history, but seems to be saying we'll do our own thing one way or another.
Peace,
Chris
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Wyoming has got a shot!
Looks like my old nemesis Barbara Cubin may be going down! HUUUHRRAH! It makes me want to switch voter reg. back to Wyoming from Oregon.
Peace,
Chris
Peace,
Chris
I AM
I've written a brief play/presentation about the Trinity for Pilots, the URC youth group. What do you think? How can I make it better? More doctrinally sound? Should I add a refrain about the Godhead in which all three characters speak at once?
Peace,
Chris
FATHER: I am the creator of the universe. Before the world was, I am. I know every hair on your heard. I formed you form the mud of the earth. I chose Abraham and his descendents to be my people, making a promise to him that I shall keep. I was with Moses in the desert and on the mountain. I rebuked David for his sin,and comforted him for his lose. I went with my people to Babylon and brought them home.
Then I led my only son Jesus to the cross and death, and brought him back from death to new life that all of you may follow. I am God the Father.
SON: I am the redeemer. When the Father spoke at the start of creation I was his Word. I came into the world as you did, a human child, born in a stable at the edge of the Roman Empire. When I came of age I was baptized by John and then started to talk to people about the things of life. I said people should love God. I said people should see themselves in others and love them accordingly. I said religion is about worshiping my Father, not being unflexable and having power. I thought all the world should be freed from sin, death, and the devil, and so I hung out with people considered unwanted. I healed the sick, and even raised a friend from the dead. When I was in Jerusalem I disrupted worship in a temple. After that I was killed on a cross.
That wasn’t the end of me though. I conquered death by coming back from the dead in glory. I told the people I hung out with to continue my work and that I would return. I am God the Son.
SPIRIT: I am the sustainer. At the beginning of things I hovered over the uncreated universe and after the Father had fashioned you He breathed me into you, giving you life.
When the Son’s cousin, John, baptized him came to him in the form of a dove and I declared him the Son of God.
After Jesus was resurrected and returned to heaven I came to his companions, the disciples. I came to them so they could communicate to others that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, in any language. The book of Acts says if you are Baptized you shall receive me. I am with Jesus’ followers to this day, leading them to follow him. I am God the Holy Spirit.
Peace,
Chris
FATHER: I am the creator of the universe. Before the world was, I am. I know every hair on your heard. I formed you form the mud of the earth. I chose Abraham and his descendents to be my people, making a promise to him that I shall keep. I was with Moses in the desert and on the mountain. I rebuked David for his sin,and comforted him for his lose. I went with my people to Babylon and brought them home.
Then I led my only son Jesus to the cross and death, and brought him back from death to new life that all of you may follow. I am God the Father.
SON: I am the redeemer. When the Father spoke at the start of creation I was his Word. I came into the world as you did, a human child, born in a stable at the edge of the Roman Empire. When I came of age I was baptized by John and then started to talk to people about the things of life. I said people should love God. I said people should see themselves in others and love them accordingly. I said religion is about worshiping my Father, not being unflexable and having power. I thought all the world should be freed from sin, death, and the devil, and so I hung out with people considered unwanted. I healed the sick, and even raised a friend from the dead. When I was in Jerusalem I disrupted worship in a temple. After that I was killed on a cross.
That wasn’t the end of me though. I conquered death by coming back from the dead in glory. I told the people I hung out with to continue my work and that I would return. I am God the Son.
SPIRIT: I am the sustainer. At the beginning of things I hovered over the uncreated universe and after the Father had fashioned you He breathed me into you, giving you life.
When the Son’s cousin, John, baptized him came to him in the form of a dove and I declared him the Son of God.
After Jesus was resurrected and returned to heaven I came to his companions, the disciples. I came to them so they could communicate to others that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, in any language. The book of Acts says if you are Baptized you shall receive me. I am with Jesus’ followers to this day, leading them to follow him. I am God the Holy Spirit.
The first half of chapter 6 of Days in the Cold is up
Days in the Cold continues on. In other news I'm starting to write a Fantasy novel, titled Gnosis. I've finished the Prologue and started the first chapter.
I've also finished reading "Stories of Emergence: Moving from absolute to authentic." I feel this book is what "a Generous Orthodoxy" should have been. It is a set of 15 autobiographical essays of Emergent Church folk. The people who contributed are quite diverse, from Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, to Parush Parushev, a formerBulgarian Communist, to George Baum, a former Lutheran who has a touching story about loosing his brother and his faith to aids, and regaining his faith in a very Lutheran way, remembering his Baptism.
I've also started reading Jimmy Carter's "The Hornet's Nest" and Jim Wallis's "God's Politics." I have to say Jimmy is letting me down, as for Jim, check out his letter to Jessie Ventura.
Peace,
Chris
I've also finished reading "Stories of Emergence: Moving from absolute to authentic." I feel this book is what "a Generous Orthodoxy" should have been. It is a set of 15 autobiographical essays of Emergent Church folk. The people who contributed are quite diverse, from Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, to Parush Parushev, a formerBulgarian Communist, to George Baum, a former Lutheran who has a touching story about loosing his brother and his faith to aids, and regaining his faith in a very Lutheran way, remembering his Baptism.
I've also started reading Jimmy Carter's "The Hornet's Nest" and Jim Wallis's "God's Politics." I have to say Jimmy is letting me down, as for Jim, check out his letter to Jessie Ventura.
Peace,
Chris
Sunday, May 07, 2006
"There is no Justice"
As I was hoovering the floors today I got thinking about Hamarabi’s law (just hoovering by itself is boring). Hamarabi’s law, is for all intensive purposes a law of retaliatory justice, which is in many ways traditional justice, and at the time of its inception a liberal law used to restrain overzealous, vengeful forms of "justice."
Todays Justice system seems focused on deterrence, keeping people from committing crimes and keeping criminals away from the rest of society. This type of Justice could be called a Restraintative Justice.
Now the question for us Christians is what kind of justice are we called to practice? Jesus says "You’ve heard it said ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy’ I say unto you love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you." This is in some ways no justice at all. Then I think deeper it’s a Relational Justice. This goes back to loving others as ourselves. It is projecting the I into the Thou, it is admitting that in general people do things not because they are our enemy, not because they are "evil" but because what they have experienced in their life has made them see the world in the way they do.
Now, one might say, "that means everything is relative, we should let rapists rape us, murderers murder us, and terrorists terrorize us, after all they are just acting out in a way rational within their world." By no means, after all loving our neighbor includes loving oneself, and further loving someone doesn’t mean letting them do whatever the hell they want. Instead it includes entering into dialogue with them so they get a wider understanding of why we feel their actions are wrong?
So what of "punishment" or "enforcement" or "education" or whatever we want to call it? My first thought was to create a situation in which they would experience their crime through their victim’s eyes. Basically a symbolic version of Retaliatory Justice. I thought about this for a while. It might foster empathy within the criminal.
Then I thought of the case of Dolstoyevski’s mock execution. When the writer Dolstoyevski was still a young lad he was quite radical, which isn’t a lauded thing in Czarist Russia. He and some of his radical brethren were caught being radical and the order went out "off with their heads" and the first two radicals were killed, next was that author of yore, and the Czar’s horseman came, galloping quickly, and said "the Czar pardons they all, they just have to live in Siberia." Those radicals who remained swore fidelity to the Czar, gave up their radical ways and were emotionally scarred for life.
Now it could be said, in favor of symbolic punishment, that the Czar’s methods were not proportional to the crime, neither in the first action, mock execution, nor in the secondary punishment. Still, when I think of Clockwork Orange and such I wonder about the results of non-physical punishment.
This post is pettering off. If anyone has any thoughts about justice that they had while cleaning rooms in an old abbey post them…
Peace,
Chris
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Universal Bones is all updated and such
Now there are links to all 5 chapters of Days in the Cold. Now you can read the entire story up til now linearly. Also Chapter 5 is done now.
Peace,
Chris
Peace,
Chris
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
A review of "a Generous Orthodoxy"
Once a great leader came to the Rabbis Hillel and Shammai. When he asked the strict Shammai, "tell me what your God commands, while standing on one foot." Shammai tried, but fell to two feet, without explaining the whole of the Torah. Then the great leader came to Hillel and said the same. Hillel hopped up on one foot and said, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor, all the rest is commentary."
If I were to sum up McLaren’s "a Generous Orthodoxy" on one foot I would say, "Ditch mutual exclusivity. Be a blessing to the whole world. Follow Jesus, not Christianity. All the rest is commentary."
"a Generous Orthodoxy" is a very auto-biographical book and conversational in tone.
The generous orthodoxy that McLaren proposes is a curious thing, to him the Emergent Church seems to be a Frankenstein monster of his own creation. He wants to borrow the best bits of various Christian traditions to form a Christianity for the post-modern age. McLaren’s Emergent Church would be an orthopraxic, non-eschatological faith, infused with the spiritual fire of Pentecostalism, the anything to spread the gospel attitude of Evangelicals, the urge to reform of Calvinists, the spirituality of Catholicism, the methodology of Methodism, the way of relating to culture of Celtic Christianity, and the ability to get along with one another of the Anglican church.
The book starts off with McLaren trying to convince us not to read the book, always a good tactic; it wets the appetite of the reader and makes them curious. In chapter one he writes about the ways in which various groups (Conservative Protestants, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Liberal Protestants, Anabaptists, and Liberation Theologians) view Jesus as savior and decides they are all true.
McLaren tries to put the Emergent Church forward as a middle ground, or maybe a synthesis, between Liberal Christianity and Conservative Christianity. To do this he defines Conservatives as narcissists and Liberals as atheists. Actually that was one of my biggest beefs with McLaren, in his Post-modern way he re-defines everything. He is a Fundamentalist, because he believes loving God and neighbor as yourself to be fundamental to his faith. He’s Calvinist because he likes reform and believes in TULIP, but TULIP in his case is "Triune Love, Unselfish Election, Limitless Reconciliation, Inspiring Grace, and Passionate Persistant Saints."
It may sound like I didn’t like this book. Not true, it did what McLaren wanted, to make me think. There is a lot of good here. He points out a lot of skeletons in Christianity’s closet and elephants in the room that no one admits are there. He does a good job at giving a general overview of reasons for historical developments in Christianity.
In some ways I think this book was written more for Baptists considering leaving the faith because of the Religious Right, as he hits out at that portion of Christianity very hard. As for liberal Christianity he simply leaves it at that we’ve lost something important in our struggle with modernity. Really he doesn’t struggle with the questions of the Christian Left beyond saying we don’t have soul and sometimes can lead to Athiesm.
One other thing, LZ points out that McLaren may be a closet Lutheran. I am not so sure, but what is interesting is he never talks directly about Lutheranism. The closest he comes is to quote Luther’s saying "Here I Stand." That said he indirectly talks about Lutheranism a LOT. Not only does the whole post-modern thing fit in well with my faith’s paradoxical nature, but quite often when he talks about other denominations he mentions off hand Lutherans are similar to this or that. He mentions us when he talks about Roman Catholics, Anabaptists and Anglicans. I think he doesn’t know what to make of us. Or, maybe he does but he realizes we are sitting on the ground he’d like to claim for the Emergent Church. Perhaps the Emergent Church, in McLare’s eyes is simply a more rowdy, less centralized version of the ELCA?
Peace,
Chris
If I were to sum up McLaren’s "a Generous Orthodoxy" on one foot I would say, "Ditch mutual exclusivity. Be a blessing to the whole world. Follow Jesus, not Christianity. All the rest is commentary."
"a Generous Orthodoxy" is a very auto-biographical book and conversational in tone.
The generous orthodoxy that McLaren proposes is a curious thing, to him the Emergent Church seems to be a Frankenstein monster of his own creation. He wants to borrow the best bits of various Christian traditions to form a Christianity for the post-modern age. McLaren’s Emergent Church would be an orthopraxic, non-eschatological faith, infused with the spiritual fire of Pentecostalism, the anything to spread the gospel attitude of Evangelicals, the urge to reform of Calvinists, the spirituality of Catholicism, the methodology of Methodism, the way of relating to culture of Celtic Christianity, and the ability to get along with one another of the Anglican church.
The book starts off with McLaren trying to convince us not to read the book, always a good tactic; it wets the appetite of the reader and makes them curious. In chapter one he writes about the ways in which various groups (Conservative Protestants, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Liberal Protestants, Anabaptists, and Liberation Theologians) view Jesus as savior and decides they are all true.
McLaren tries to put the Emergent Church forward as a middle ground, or maybe a synthesis, between Liberal Christianity and Conservative Christianity. To do this he defines Conservatives as narcissists and Liberals as atheists. Actually that was one of my biggest beefs with McLaren, in his Post-modern way he re-defines everything. He is a Fundamentalist, because he believes loving God and neighbor as yourself to be fundamental to his faith. He’s Calvinist because he likes reform and believes in TULIP, but TULIP in his case is "Triune Love, Unselfish Election, Limitless Reconciliation, Inspiring Grace, and Passionate Persistant Saints."
It may sound like I didn’t like this book. Not true, it did what McLaren wanted, to make me think. There is a lot of good here. He points out a lot of skeletons in Christianity’s closet and elephants in the room that no one admits are there. He does a good job at giving a general overview of reasons for historical developments in Christianity.
In some ways I think this book was written more for Baptists considering leaving the faith because of the Religious Right, as he hits out at that portion of Christianity very hard. As for liberal Christianity he simply leaves it at that we’ve lost something important in our struggle with modernity. Really he doesn’t struggle with the questions of the Christian Left beyond saying we don’t have soul and sometimes can lead to Athiesm.
One other thing, LZ points out that McLaren may be a closet Lutheran. I am not so sure, but what is interesting is he never talks directly about Lutheranism. The closest he comes is to quote Luther’s saying "Here I Stand." That said he indirectly talks about Lutheranism a LOT. Not only does the whole post-modern thing fit in well with my faith’s paradoxical nature, but quite often when he talks about other denominations he mentions off hand Lutherans are similar to this or that. He mentions us when he talks about Roman Catholics, Anabaptists and Anglicans. I think he doesn’t know what to make of us. Or, maybe he does but he realizes we are sitting on the ground he’d like to claim for the Emergent Church. Perhaps the Emergent Church, in McLare’s eyes is simply a more rowdy, less centralized version of the ELCA?
Peace,
Chris
China's holocaust?
I don't know if this is all Falun Gong propaganda, but if there is some truth to it... God help us.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Just Finished A Generous Orthodoxy
As some of you know I'm in search of what the "Emergent" church is. After volunteering at a Christian book shop I now have 40 quid worth of research materials. I started with "a Generous Orthodoxy" by Brian D. McLaren. Its a very autobiographical book. On one hand I appriciated it as it seemed to name a lot of elephants in the room, on the other hand it also felt like debates I had back in High School, only with some sorces to back up the claims.
I'll have a more full review up hopefully sometime this week.
Peace,
Chris
I'll have a more full review up hopefully sometime this week.
Peace,
Chris
The May edition of the Foundation is up
Check it out. This month we will be discussing Nukes.
Peace,
Chris
Peace,
Chris
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Another chapter started in "Days in the Cold"
I have now started chapter 5 of Days in the cold over at UniversalBones.
Other than that. Not much going on here. I didn't get the scholarship for Clare College, which means if I get into Cambridge I'll have to take out loans for grad school. On the plus side I ate some wonderful Korean food at TFG volunteer Melody's house last night along with Vik and Sarah. Afterwards Melody locked herself out of the house so I ended up being more dashing than Indiana Jones, braver than anyone Ian Flemming could have thought up, and more rogue-ish than Hans Solo and Wolverine combined, by crawling through her host parent's garage packed with stuff to get to a door that seemed to lead to the house. Turned out it ended up on the patio. James Bond I am not.
Peace,
Chris
Other than that. Not much going on here. I didn't get the scholarship for Clare College, which means if I get into Cambridge I'll have to take out loans for grad school. On the plus side I ate some wonderful Korean food at TFG volunteer Melody's house last night along with Vik and Sarah. Afterwards Melody locked herself out of the house so I ended up being more dashing than Indiana Jones, braver than anyone Ian Flemming could have thought up, and more rogue-ish than Hans Solo and Wolverine combined, by crawling through her host parent's garage packed with stuff to get to a door that seemed to lead to the house. Turned out it ended up on the patio. James Bond I am not.
Peace,
Chris
Another chapter started in "Days in the Cold"
I have now started chapter 5 of Days in the cold over at UniversalBones.
Other than that. Not much going on here. I didn't get the scholarship for Clare College, which means if I get into Cambridge I'll have to take out loans for grad school. On the plus side I ate some wonderful Korean food at TFG volunteer Melody's house last night along with Vik and Sarah. Afterwards Melody locked herself out of the house so I ended up being more dashing than Indiana Jones, braver than anyone Ian Flemming could have thought up, and more rogue-ish than Hans Solo and Wolverine combined, by crawling through her host parent's garage packed with stuff to get to a door that seemed to lead to the house. Turned out it ended up on the patio. James Bond I am not.
Peace,
Chris
Other than that. Not much going on here. I didn't get the scholarship for Clare College, which means if I get into Cambridge I'll have to take out loans for grad school. On the plus side I ate some wonderful Korean food at TFG volunteer Melody's house last night along with Vik and Sarah. Afterwards Melody locked herself out of the house so I ended up being more dashing than Indiana Jones, braver than anyone Ian Flemming could have thought up, and more rogue-ish than Hans Solo and Wolverine combined, by crawling through her host parent's garage packed with stuff to get to a door that seemed to lead to the house. Turned out it ended up on the patio. James Bond I am not.
Peace,
Chris
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