Archive for November, 2007:
The “Country Club” Church Is Crap.
Say that ten times fast…
Danielle recently made a comment concerning a post comparing Jack Bauer of the TV Series 24 with Jesus Christ:
And I think there’s a comparison to the church in there. Because although the suspense is pretty cool (as in what will happen here on earth, as well as after we die), it is the human parts of the story that compel people to keep reading/listening/feeling/believing perhaps. And the church has been nothing if not revolutionary in history. Jesus’ story is a prime example.
It instantly reminded me of a couple quotes that generally make me want to pick up sword and shield to charge headlong into this cosmic revolution. This is an axe I gring almost continually. Having not grown up in the church, paradigm for what church should be is not as convoluted by tradition and/or fundamentalism. I am perhaps more able to read how the church is portrayed in scripture without the baggage of moralistic rules and cultural taboos. Of course, I do have other things that cloud my judgment, and there are people who have grown up in the church and are able to see through much of that. But this is something that is particularly close to my heart because of my experiences.
For your reading pleasure, here are two of my favorite quotes Read more »
Magic Eye
Disclaimer: this post is an explanation of Ether Meek’s thesis in her book Longing to Know. Most of the examples are taken from this book as well.
I have dealt with knowing in my two earlier posts about the need for certainty and the three epistemic options. Meek offers this new definition: “Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues, to focus on a coherent pattern, and submit to its reality.”
Meek argues that knowing is a three step process. First, we look at clues. Then we struggle to looks through the clues, and finally we integrate the clues. Confusing? Let’s look at an example. Think of those “magic eyes.” One is shown above. You are supposed to look at this 2D image and somehow you are able to see something in 3D. Knowing is like coming to see this 3D image. We are given a list of clues to how to see this image (http://www.magiceye.com/faq_example.htm). Then we try to do it ourselves. For the longest time I couldn’t get the stupid thing Read more »
Three Epistemic Options and Garden State
In my last post, I tried to outline how the need for certainty leads us to believe we cannot know anything at all. The bar many of us set for truth is so high nothing seems to be able to pass it. Sometimes it seems reason leads us to believe there is no reason (in the old model’s definition). So what the heck do we do with this?
We really only have three options. We can stay in the old model. We can admit that nothing can be known (what I call epistemic nihilism). Or we can scrape the old model and save knowledge.
Read more »
it’s not 2008 yet, is it??
Part of the downside of the 24-hour news cycle is that what wouldn’t pass for news 10 years ago passes for news now. The air, the pages, and the Web sites have to be filled with something.
I thought of this while noticing a recent article in the New York Times about the supposed “splintering” of evangelicals as it pertains to the 2008 presidential election, and cultural issues overall. I find the article to be a mixture of accurate understanding of history, yet also an ignorance of evangelicals overall.
This ignorance of understanding evangelicals happens a lot in the media, and it’s nothing new. Other religious groups no doubt experience this as well, the attempt by various media outlets to effectively label and fit the values of people into 250 words or less. It was in 1993 that a Washington Post reporter labeled evangelicals as “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” Other labels have not been this insipid, but labels regardless abound.
(And before you prepare to comment, I recognize that evangelicals label folks just as much as anyone else.)
Your Worst Life Now
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7AuG6XuDYo] Since we are discussing a heavy chapter like Genesis 3, I thought I might lend a little levity to the discussion with the title. 3 points to anyone who can tell me what the reference is, and yes I am keeping track of points! I have written a companion paper with this video that covers some of the secondary stuff going on in this chapter. The video of course hits the high points, but there is just so much happening in this one chapter! Well, enjoy, and as always please feel free to post with comments, questions, and discrepancies. Notes on Sin and Its Nature
Jesus Christ and… Jack Bauer?
This post makes me smile. Mark Driscoll, a Seattle Pastor often criticized for being “overly macho” and dudely (to which he will gladly admit to the latter and deny the former as even being possible) wrote an article last year that I keep coming back to for some valuable perspective and laughs.
While I am not nearly as outgoing in my “dudeliness,” or advocation thereof, I certainly appreciate the perspective and agree that a responsible, biblical, and moral masculinity is sorely lacking in our culture. Neither he nor I are advocating misogyny, subjugation of women, or anything else that would disagree with the heart and spirit of equality between the sexes. Rather, we both see a need to redeem men in our culture to values like responsibility, fatherhood, loyalty, faithfulness, sacrifice and selflessness service. Driscoll’s article uses humor to connect biblical masculinity as lived out by Jesus to similar parallels in culture. In this instance, we have the pleasure of giving you Jack Bauer.
Enjoy!
Read more »
Certainty and Knowledge
In our culture, the need for certainty is often held up as the norm, skepticism is even praised. The default position in the Scientific Method is doubt. We seem to believe that if something is true, it will be able to stand up to any test (without even questioning the validity of the test itself).
Until a few months ago, I also embraced this view.
I thought truth was something that could be put into nice neat propositional statements and always could be proved with absolute certainty. The first time I read Descartes’ Meditations, I soaked it up like a sponge. I thought that here was how I could know, with absolute certainty, that I exist, and subsequently that God exists. I could build a firm foundation and be certain of anything that comes from this foundation. After all, this foundation was built form the idea of radical doubt. But our need for certainty is misplaced and leads to epistemic nihilism (the inablitiy to know anything, and a sense of loss in this).
