In the words of Jesus, "It is finished"

Okay, an undergraduate degree is nothing like crucifixion, I know that. None the less, I am done! I walked this morning!
Also, I'm writing this on my new laptop my parents bought me for graduation!
Peace,
Chris
PS I'll have pictures for you guys soon, my mom is going to be putting the ones she took online.

I'm done

All assignments are done. I wrote 41 pages for Creative Writing. It is titled Testaments, which are four differant accounts of the death of Jason Clay, a medic in Iraq. I used Source Criticism of the Gospels to construct a similar structure. If anyone wants a look at it just email me.
Peace,
Chris

An interesting letter

Dear Dr. Laura Schlessinger,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I
have
learned a great deal from you and your radio show, and I try to share
that
knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend
the
homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus
18:22
clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific
laws
and how to best follow them.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors.
They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with
this?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for
her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how
do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are
around
us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not
Canadians. Can you clarify?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to
kill
him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality.
I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does
my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you
can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal
and unchanging.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Crusader

The Questions

The Questions
1. How much choice do we have in spiritual matters?
2. What are some traits of a “Christian relationship”?
3. Who should take communion? Is it a community thing? If so how big is that community?
4. Motivational speakers in Japan can get people to break down sobbing and asking their parents for forgiveness, this is done to make employees think of their boss as a parent. What does this suggest about experientialism in Church? About the Trinity? About the very idea of God?
5. If God is love what is hate/fear/etc?
6. Most of the Biblical characters aren’t all that great of people. What does that suggest about God?
7. Are dreams spiritually significant? How? Why? Why not?

As you know I'm a leftist who believes in global warming, but you have to admit this is ironic

These two guys

had hoped to make the crossing to call attention to global warming and the receding polar ice cap

but it was too cold to go. As I said, ironic if nothing else.

Jolly Old England

Well, I have a possible assignment next year at Saint Mark's College in Audley End, Saffron Walder, in Essex. It is a "residential youth and children's acrivity and retreat center." The site dates to the 13th century.
One of the strange things I may end up doing is teaching kids, "archery and trampolining." When I told my mother this this morning she burst out laughing. For those of you who don't know I'm not particularilly blessed when it comes to cordination. I think she had visions in her head of a bunch of young british folk scewering themselves under my supervions.
That's the info for now. I'm going to call tomorrow, see what's up.
Peace,
Chris

Love Potion Number 9

A joint Swiss American team has found that oxytocin causes people to take more risks.
Oxytocin is released during sex and during child birth. This might be part of the explaination as to why people who have sex share a bond, as well as why mothers don't kill their screaming little brats (by the way hi mom!)
Peace,
Chris

Don't forget about Darfur

U.S. Response to the Crisis in Darfur
By Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director

Published in The Washington Post

In his willingness to confront evil head-on, President Bush likes to think he's more decisive than that mushy-headed multilateralist Bill Clinton. But when I look at the Bush administration's response to what it has itself called genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, I can't help thinking I've seen this movie before. It recalls the early Clinton administration (in which I served) and its initially ineffectual stand against genocide in Bosnia.
It goes on. Check it out.

SERMON!!! WENT WELL

It was good times, I've heard nothing except good things about the sermon. I was a bit worried as I went into the situation having only slept 4-5 hours the night before, and had wrote the sermon today only. But it ended up going well, I felt comfortable enough with my "audience"(this term is very problematic, but you get the idea) and was able to ad-lib a little.
Peace,
Chris

Where do we find the good news this evening? “I never knew you; go away from me you evil doers.” Not an encouraging start.
This morning I roused myself up at 5AM to finally force myself to deal with these words of Jesus. Throughout the week whenever I had set aside time to work on this sermon I’d found an excuse to do something else, work on essays for class, read some in Jack Miles’ latest well written heresy “Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God”, or hang out with a friend down by the Willamette, watching high school students celebrate senior ditch day by intertubing and collecting smooth well worn rocks and snorkeling and splashing. Anything to avoid “I never knew thee.”
By 6:15 I had re-read all the verses for today, and had finished up the intro for the sermon. Yet I still ask, what can I say about a Jesus who rejects people who cry out to him, “Lord Lord?”
I suppose I could talk about this as a proof text for infant baptism. I could talk about how it exemplifies right practice for the Christian church. That is, baptism is an adoption into the family of God. Nothing we do, no choice we make, can break that bond. It isn’t about us choosing Jesus, crying out “Lord Lord,” but about Jesus choosing us.
I suppose I could talk about those so called Christians who were on campus this week and confronted people with a sign that read, “people who make me sick,” and listed, “Homosexuals, pedophiles, Catholics, deviant women” and so on./ There’s some good news. Those who twist the message of our Lord, those who cling to blinding sensational theatrics, instead of living out the lifelong path of Jesus and preaching the humbling good news of the lamb who was slain, to those that practice a pharasaic brand of Christianity Jesus will say, “Go away from me, you evildoers.”
I suppose I could talk about the yearlong mission to the United Kingdom that I will be going on starting in August. I will be either working at a youth hostel or assisting a pastor or priest over there. I will be doing the will of Our Father in heaven, building up a house of faith upon that island, preaching a word so powerful that it shall not fall when the tides come in, that is the Word of God found at the beginning of the Gospel of John, that is Jesus Christ. I could talk about that, but I’m too Scandinavian to see referring to my future good works as anything but prideful.
I suppose I could talk about this as a scary text for us Lutherans, us “frozen chosen.”
I have a confession to make. I have never prophesied nor cast out a demon. Jesus tells us that with the faith of a mustard seed we can thrown cliffs into the ocean, and yet we often hum and haw when asked about our faith. We often prefer to think spiritual things are what happen to other people, you know, the Baptists, and so ignore, miss, or hide our own powerful experiences of God.
-Brief Pause-
I have more of a sermon prepared, I’m going to end up talking about the connection between faith and works, but first I’m going to give a little breath room for the Holy Spirit. How does this text speak to us tonight? Where have you found the good news in these verses?
-HS-
In the end I’ve decided to tackle the seeming paradox presented to us today. As many of you know the Lutheran church is well aquatinted with Paradox. We proclaim each one of us is 100% saint and 100% sinner. We affirm that Jesus was completely human, and completely God. We hold that the Kingdom of God is already here, and at the same time say it is not yet here.
So it should surprise us little that there is a tension between Jesus saying: those that, “do the will of my father in heaven” are the ones who will enter the Kingdom of heaven and Paul’s formula of being, “Justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effecive,” and I emphasize this last part, “Through FAITH.” We have before us the classic problem of faith and works.
If we are saved by works why the messy death on the cross? If we ourselves can obtain righteousness and merit through our own actions what need have we of Jesus?
If we are saved by faith what do we do after we come to faith? Do we just sit around and feel good about how great we are because we were able to figured out this Jesus thing? Do we get re-filled by the idea of Jesus once a week at Church and not let it touch the rest of our lives?
As Lutherans we of course tend to transpose the problems of the Catholic Church during the time of the Reformation upon Paul’s writing. If we even hear the word “works” our ears prick up, our teeth set on edge. /We get an unhealthy compulsion to nail a thesis to something./ But this dichotomy of works and faith can be overplayed. When this happens the word “faith” becomes an abstraction. All of a sudden what matters is that we believe certain things, that we affirm certain creeds and memorize certain verses of the bible. None of which are bad, as long as they are not all Christianity is. But often faith becomes morphed into “belief”, thought, or philosophy. In some ways Christianity becomes nothing more than a mind game.
This isn’t the way it should be. Faith is something that changes ones life. Did Abraham show his faith in Yahweh by sitting on his butt? No, he went from Ur to the Promised Land.
When the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land in Deuteronomy they didn’t just think good thoughts about God, they bound them, “as a sign” on “ their hand and on their forehead,” which we see Orthodox Jews doing even today.
In the Song of Songs, which is a poem about the love between two lovers, interpreted by most Christians as a poem about the love between Christ and his Church. The beloved, in this interpretation the Church, wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about the lover, that is Jesus. She doesn’t just sit in her bed day dreaming about him; no! she sneaks out into the night to find her lover.
Paul writes in Ephesians chapter two verses 8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Did you catch that? We are saved by grace, that is God’s freely given atoning death on the cross for us, through faith, for works. And likewise it is written in the book of James, “Faith without works is dead.”
Grace and Faith are the things that save us from sin, but it is works that we are saved for. It is like that house Jesus talks about. The rock is faith in Jesus, but to have a house/ to live into faith in Jesus/ one needs to build, one needs to work, not for salvation, but because one’s idea and one’s deed are one.
Professor Falk, explains the relationship between belief and faith, and faith and works like this:
There once was a tightrope walker who plied his trade over Niagra falls. He would walk across the raging river, the spillover kept the rope wet and slick.
One day he showed up to his job with a wheelbarrow. He climbed up to the rope, set the wheelbarrow on it, and looked around. By then a crowd had formed, because they were naturally intrigued by the sight of this man oh way up high, a wheelbarrow swaying precariously on the tightrope. Then the tightrope walker asked,
“Does anyone believe I can wheel a person across to the other side?”
One loudmouth in the crowd shouted back, “Of course you can.”
The tightrope walker responded, “Hop in.”
That is the difference between belief and faith. Believing that Jesus went over to the other side and came back is one thing, HOPPING in, is another.
I have one last story to share. As most of you know I was transplanted to Eugene by way Cheyenne Wyoming, which is a rather… old western kind of town. In the summers we have something called “Frontier days” which is the world’s largest outdoor rodeo. A movie theater in Cheyenne was the only place I’ve ever heard someone give off a cowboy woop in response to action on the screen.
Now, I’m not exactly sure where the tradition started, my guess is it was a mixture of Summer Bible camp and the cowboy mythos of Wyoming, but at Christ Lutheran, the Church I attended in Cheyenne, when the Pastor closes the service with, “Go in peace and love the Serve the Lord,” the congregation responds not simply “thanks be to God,” thus acknowledge their belief in God, but “Thanks be to God and WEEE WILLL” acknowledging a faith in God.
So, to remember the difference between faith and belief, tonight when we close up services and it is said, “Go in peace and love and serve the Lord,” respond not just with belief, but with faith.

Indi 500 gal is a relation apparently

Got this email from my aunt today.
Peace,
Chris
Hi all,
I had an email from my cousin in Roseau. She and her hubby are going to San Diego via Minneapolis. While they're in Minneapolis, they will visit with Sheila's sister, Jean, who just lost her husband to cancer. They are going to watch the Indy 500 with Jean and her kids. Danica Patrick is Sheila, Jean, and Tallie's cousin's kid. The cousin was Bev Flaten. As an adult, Bev has lived in Wisconsin and Illinois and that is where Danica was raised, I think. Bev's dad, Uncle Gilmore's brother, was killed in a car accident many years ago up by Roseau, I think. Not sure about the location, though. Sometime in the 1970's, though.
I was looking at pictures of her on the net and she certainly does look like the Flaten girls did at that age. And is just as petite and athletic as they were.
Well, we have a graduation party to attend in GF today and then Carl and Roberta's daughter's in Karlstad tomorrow so best get ready for the first one.
Take care and hope to see you all soon.

Yar! So much to do, so little time

I finished writing one of my two final essays. It started out being about Isidore of Seville (first Christian Encyclopedist) and ended up being about Neo-platonism and Nietzsche. Here is my conclusion:

The rejection of Ireland, Scotland, and Turkey as being genuinely European all have something to do with how Isidore’s worldview shaped Europe’s view of itself. McPharson’s wanting to enter the closed literary canon of Europe could in some way be connected with Isidore’s reliance on Neo-platonism, though the case for this is weak and the issue itself is more complex. Nietzsche is definitely reacting against Isidore’s way of thinking by attacking systems of value that are derived from the non-empirical. He is in some ways attacking the entire system of Europe and the West that emphasizes morals built off abstracts. Some of his other work also attacks order and logic. All that is left of the European idea is expansion.

So I have a sermon tomorrow, and it hasn't been written! Preaching tomorrow! Yarrr! And after that I still have a 15 page paper about the Binding of Isaac in the book of Jubilees. Yarr!
Peace,
Chris

Starwars parody, great fun

Lord tader, Cuke Skywalker, Ham Solo, Chewbroccoli, Tofu D2, and more. Check it out, it is worth a watch.

A discussion about Miles view of Jesus' sexuality

I just finished Miles' section titled, "Interlude:The Asexuality of t he Father and the Sexuality of the Son." It was interesting, though not entirely for the theological stuff. The most interesting thing, in my mind, was the evolution of sexuality since Freud. Freud saw sex as, "highly personal, intensely subject-centered" "intenssely private." whereas "in our own era, sexual matters are decreasingly private, increasingly impersonal, and decreasingly consequential." "Everyone's sex life is just part of a large, collective, impersonal, well-understood, but ultimately meanginless process."
As I said in my response to Melancthon Miles talks first about God as the repression of sexual feelings in comparison to other dieties, but later on when he talks about Song of Songs, Ezekiel 16:25-41, 23, and so on he says God is kind of more sensual than the Greek gods. I found that a little weird, perhaps I'm misreading it slightly.
He also talks about Genesis 6:1-4, sons of God and such. He uses them to talk about the "sensuous immortals." He also lumps Adam into that as well, as he knows about his nudity (a sensous thing). Miles' point about the "sensuous immortals" is that whenever an immortal tries to have sex God snuffs them out. Miles contends the reason for this is simple, "everything sexual dies," and "everything that does not die is not sexual."
Well, I've messed around enough online for the day, I'm going to get to work, I have a sermon to write, and two 15 page papers to write as well.
Peace,
Chris

Faulkner's speech

I think I've posted this before, but it is one of my favorites. I'm using a section of it as an introductory quote for my final project in Creative Writing.

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Post about great professor who is leaving from a friend

We had a goodbye party for Timothy, a Professor at the U of O on Sunday night. It was really moving. He's an amazing man. Kevin said it better than I could.
Peace,
Chris