Poetic Faith: Culture + Subcreation w/r/t Religion

Meditation at the End of the School Year (Riffing on Oswald Chambers)

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:12:00 -0400

You shall not go out with haste, … for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard —Isaiah 52:12

As the year draws to a close we look back and see places where we’ve walked with God faithfully and where we’ve blown it. For some of us, we have some real victories and some growth to look back on. For others of us, we’ve blown it more than we’ve actually succeeded.

And the truth is that though the past is past it still matters. “… God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15).

So as we look back, and we might have some regrets, and that’s okay. As Oswald Chambers says, “God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into…spiritual growth for our future.”

But the good news is that our failures are in the past and we don’t have to live there. God forgives our stumbles and failures. He looks back our debts we’ve incurred along the way and like a spendthrift government he settles them. He pays them off. He bails us out. Jesus takes our past and embraces it in his past, in the cross. Again, as Oswald Chambers says, “Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

God is the God of yesterday but he’s also the God of tomorrow. As Isaiah says, “… the Lord will go before you … .” God is keeping watch for our future so we won’t fall into the same traps as easily this time. He’s got a good plan for us this next week, and this summer, and this next year, and for forever.

So as we turn the chapter into the summer, and next year, know that whatever was in that last chapter that wasn’t God’s best for you - a bad relationship with a guy or a girl, or an addiction that just won’t seem to go away, or feelings of unworthiness or meaninglessness, or just apathy about your passion for God - God wants to help you turn the page and write a new chapter that’s driven by his grace, and his love, and his glory.

Notes on our College Ready Series

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:40:00 -0400

This weekend was the fourth and final session of our College Ready series for seniors graduating out of the youth group.

The series was a good time of getting the students together, blessing them, and trying to pass on a little wisdom. For two of the sessions we tried to pull back in key college students who could connect our graduating seniors to campus ministry at a range of common university choices

Here’s the breakdown of what we did.

A. We taught four sessions on:

1. A Christian Vision for Academics

2. Friendships & Dating

3. Campus Ministry & Kingdom Impact

4. Surviving the First Year (which featured a panel of returning college students who graduated from the youth group).

B. We had a senior dinner at one of the parent’s house, where we ate tacos, gave out presents, and offered a little charge.

C. I collected all the university information from our seniors so we can shoot them encouraging texts during the first week as well as campus-specific ministry info.

After all the sessions, here were the five key points we wanted students to take away.

Some final thoughts about college:

College is probably the last time you’ll get to really focus on learning, so enjoy it and be a passionate student. There are lots of smart students at the university, but few passionate students. Passionate students stand out.
College friends will likely be with you for a long time, they are often the folks you have stand up with you in your wedding, so seek out friends that will help you become the person God is calling you to be.
College is an ideal time (maybe the best time) to find a wife or husband, so date with an eye on marriage.
In your first week, rush campus ministry.
Remember that wherever you go, Jesus is Lord there too.

"It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:45:02 -0400

“It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to think of a mob shouting a distinction in terms.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Twelve Types (via aristosophy)

"We are entering the age of “visualcy,” the third great transformation in the way that human beings..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:41:41 -0400

“

We are entering the age of “visualcy,” the third great transformation in the way that human beings engage and interpret their world. The first was orality…The second age was the age of literacy…But now the age of literacy is waning. Today the most compelling and significant information is communicated visually — neither through speech or in writing, but in still and moving images. To be sure, just as literate people do not cease to speak, visually oriented people do not cease to read. Even young Americans spend a great deal of time reading text messages, emails, and blogs. But as a culture shifts from literacy to visualcy, its members give greatest weight to communication that comes in the form of images. Visualcy poses challenges for a Christian tradition that both shaped and was shaped by the second great transition to literacy. It poses even greater challenges to the task of graduate education. Graduate school in the humanities is the very epitome of the age of literacy, built on reading and writing texts.

What do seminaries have to say to a culture that orients itself to the image, not the word (or the Word)? Or to use a better verb, what do they have to show? Seminaries that move actively to foster “visualcy” in their communication, pedagogy, and study will have an opportunity to let the word, and the Word, influence the emerging visual generation rather than be swept aside by it. Film and the visual arts are deeply theological, and utterly essential, areas of study for future church leaders. And every seminary should be considering whether they are equipping their graduates to be excellent practitioners, as well as interpreters, of visual communication.

”

- http://www.catalystresources.org/issues/393Crouch.htm

“ON GOOD FRIDAY THE SPEARS WERE REAL,” Auden yelled

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:42:19 -0400

“ON GOOD FRIDAY THE SPEARS WERE REAL,” Auden yelled

Here is your King. “So the soldiers took charge of Jesus....

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:22:28 -0400

Here is your King.

“So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.” (John 19)

“When our Lord was handed over to the will of his cruel foes, they ordered him, in mockery of his royal dignity, to carry the instrument of his own torture…To the wicked, the sight of the Lord carrying his own cross was indeed an object of derision. But to the faithful a great mystery was revealed, for the cross was destined to become the scepter of his power. Here was the majestic spectacle of a glorious conqueror mightily overthrowing the hostile forces of the devil and nobly bearing the trophy of his victory. On the shoulders of his invincible patience he carried the sign of salvation for all the kingdoms of the earth to worship, as if on that day he would strengthen all his future disciples by the symbol of his work and say to them, “Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Leo the Great)

"Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do..."

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:03:34 -0500

“

Everyone, sooner or later, gets a thorough schooling in brokenness. The question becomes: What to do with the pieces? Some people hunker down atop the local pile of ruins and make do, Bedouin tending their goats in the shade of shattered giants. Others set about breaking what remains of the world into bits ever smaller and more jagged, kicking through the rubble like kids running through piles of leaves. And some people, passing among the scattered pieces of that great overturned jigsaw puzzle, start to pick up a piece here, a piece there, with a vague yet irresistible notion that perhaps something might be done about putting the thing back together again.

Two difficulties with this latter scheme at once present themselves. First of all, we have only ever glimpsed, as if through half-closed lids, the picture on the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box. Second, no matter how diligent we have been about picking up pieces along the way, we will never have anywhere near enough of them to finish the job. The most we can hope to accomplish with our handful of salvaged bits—the bittersweet harvest of observation and experience—is to build a little world of our own. A scale model of that mysterious original, unbroken, half—remembered. Of course the worlds we build out of our store of fragments can be only approximations, partial and inaccurate. As representations of the vanished whole that haunts us, they must be accounted failures. And yet in that very failure, in their gaps and inaccuracies, they may yet be faithful maps, accurate scale models, of this beautiful and broken world. We call these scale models “works of art.”

”

- Michael Chabon, up to his usual delightfulness, with a post about Wes Anderson (via wesleyhill)

"Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)… perhaps the greatest thinker America has produced, certainly did..."

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 12:54:45 -0500

“

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)… perhaps the greatest thinker America has produced, certainly did embrace divine determinism. And Edwards endorsed determinism, for the most part, out of concern for divine sovereignty. His idea, ultimately, is that God’s sovereignty requires that God himself be the only real cause of whatever happens. In the final analysis, God is the only agent, the only being capable of action, and the only cause of whatever events occur.

Edwards’ endorsement is weighty; and divine sovereignty is indeed important; but there are enormously high costs associated with his view. This is not the place for a full-dress discussion, but, just to indicate where the discussion could go, I note two problems for Edwards’ view. First, if God is the real cause of everything, then he is also the real cause of sin; he is the real cause of every sinful action. But Christians have for the most part strenuously avoided the conclusion that God is the author of sin. God permits sin, certainly; but does he cause it? Does he cause the wickedness and the atrocities that our sad world displays? Does God cause genocide in Africa? Did he cause the Holocaust? Does he cause all the less conspicuous but nonetheless appalling sins committed by humankind? That seems impossible to square with God’s perfect goodness.

And second, we human beings often do what we know is wrong, and are both responsible for so doing and guilty for so doing. But if determinism is true, then on any occasion when I do what is wrong, it isn’t possible for me to refrain from doing wrong. And if it isn’t possible for me to refrain from doing wrong, then I can’t really be responsible for that wrong-doing—not in the relevant sense anyway. We do sometimes say that arterial plaque is responsible for many heart attacks, but that’s not the relevant sense of “responsibility.” The relevant sense involves being properly subject to disapprobation, moral criticism, and even punishment; no one would consider criticizing or punishing a deposit of plaque. By contrast, if I knowingly do what is wrong, I am indeed properly subject to disapproval and blame. But I am not properly blamed for doing what it was not within my power not to do. On Edwards’ view, we seem to lose any notion of human responsibility. These are costs for Edwards’ divine determinism, and they are certainly substantial.

”

- From a review of Sam Harris’s FREE WILL by good old Alvin Plantinga. I love that a product of Calvin College maintains, quite rightly, that determinism falls down on the control principle. If no decisions are meaningfully within our control, moral praise and blame cease to make sense.

"ON THE EAR-CUTTING SCENE IN RESERVOIR DOGS: “Sure, I think the scene is pretty horrible. I..."

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:47:51 -0500

“ON THE EAR-CUTTING SCENE IN RESERVOIR DOGS: “Sure, I think the scene is pretty horrible. I didn’t make it for yahoos to hoot and holler. It’s supposed to be terrible. But I didn’t show it to convey a message. I don’t think Stanley Kubrick was condemning violence in Clockwork Orange. He wanted to film that stuff. It was cinematically exciting. He loved mocking ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ Clint Eastwood fortunately decided to finish The Unforgiven in the right way, by taking everyone out. Did you see Patriot Games? It’s a revenge movie, but they don’t let Harrison Ford get to kill the bad guy at the end. The guy falls on a shovel, which is an asinine, chicken-shit way to kill the villain. They should go to movie jail for this! The only way to end it is for Harrison Ford to beat this guy to death.””

- -From Quentin Tarantino Interviews.

This is a helpful Quentin Tarantino quote about the way his movies avoid typical statements w/r/t violence (or anything else). The violence and revenge in most of his movies has a moral dimension, but it isn’t included to make a moral statement. Tarantino doesn’t think revenge is morally good, but he likes including violence because it’s aesthetically powerful and compelling to watch and generally fun to witness on the movie screen.

From: The Quentin Tarantino Archives Community

Gungor on Christian Music

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:57:35 -0500

Gungor on Christian Music

"TRULY, O Lord, this is the unapproachable light in which you dwell; for truly there is nothing else..."

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 22:47:20 -0400

“TRULY, O Lord, this is the unapproachable light in which you dwell; for truly there is nothing else which can penetrate this light, that it may see you there. Truly, I see it not, because it is too bright for me. And yet, whatsoever I see, I see through it, as the weak eye sees what it sees through the light of the sun, which in the sun itself it cannot look upon. My understanding cannot reach that light, for it shines too bright. It does not comprehend it, nor does the eye of my soul endure to gaze upon it long. It is dazzled by the brightness, it is overcome by the greatness, it is overwhelmed by the infinity, it is dazed by the largeness, of the light.”

- Anselm, Proslogion, ch. 16.

brandingtheuspresidents: Twenty Sixth President: Theodore...

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:46:00 -0400

brandingtheuspresidents:

Twenty Sixth President: Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt (1901-1909)

"In the last days: the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the..."

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 09:17:00 -0400

“

In the last days:

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

”

- Isaiah 2: 1-3

Augustine’s Commentary: I tell you, that many will come from east and west. Where will they come? Where they believe… So they will come from east and west; not to the temple of Jerusalem, not to some central section of the earth, not to climb some mountain —-and yet they are coming to the temple of Jerusalem, and to some central section, and to some mountain.

The central place they are coming to is Christ himself; he is at the center, because he is equally related to all; anything placed in the center is common to all. They are coming to the mountain.

Approach the mountain, climb up the mountain, and you that climb it, don’t go down it. There you will be safe, there you will be protected; Christ is your mountain of refuge. And where is Christ? At the right hand of the Father, since he has ascended into heaven. (Sermon 62A.3)

nickholmes: Rule Of The Universe: Pigeons hate peer pressure...

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 18:00:47 -0400

nickholmes:

Rule Of The Universe: Pigeons hate peer pressure (thanks Angela)

"The Dawning Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns; Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;..."

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 19:05:27 -0400

“

The Dawning

Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead gathered into frowns:
Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth:
Awake, awake;
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry;
And feel his death, but not his victory.
Arise sad heart; if thou do not withstand,
Christ’s resurrection thine may be:
Do not by hanging down break from the hand,
Which as it riseth, raiseth thee:
Arise, arise;
And with his burial-linen dry thine eyes:
Christ left his grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears, or blood, not want a handkerchief.

—George Herbert (1593-1633)

”

- Throwback!: George Herbert’s “The Dawning” | antler

"But I think The Next Generation’s underlying appeal went beyond the image of happy, smart..."

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:02:43 -0400

“But I think The Next Generation’s underlying appeal went beyond the image of happy, smart people saving you a seat in Ten Forward. As an example here, think about the Harry Potter series. One of the reasons J.K. Rowling’s books exerted such an appeal over every sentient creature on earth is that they resolved, indeed fused, a cultural contradiction. She took the aesthetic of old-fashioned English boarding-school life and placed it at the center of a narrative about political inclusiveness. You get to keep the scarves, the medieval dining hall, the verdant lawns, the sense of privilege (you’re a wizard, Harry), while not only losing the snobbery and racism but actually casting them as the villains of the series. It’s the Slytherins and Death Eaters who have it in for mudbloods, not Harry and his friends, Hogwarts’ true heirs. The result of this, I would argue, is an absolutely bonkers subliminal reconfiguration of basically the entire cultural heritage of England. It’s as if Rowling reboots a 1,000-year-old national tradition into something that’s (a) totally unearned but (b) also way better than the original. Of course it electrified people. Star Trek does something similar, though with an American contradiction that’s arguably even more fundamental. It was already possible, by the early ’90s and actually long before them, to trace the terms of the current partisan divide in America. Conservatives — think in Jonathan Haidt–ish terms here — value tradition, authority, and group identity; liberals value tolerance, fairness, and care. Or whatever; you can draw the distinctions however you’d like. The point is, The Next Generation depicts a strict military hierarchy acting with great moral clarity in the name of civilization, all anti-postmodern, “conservative” stuff — but the values they’re so conservatively clear about are ideals like peace and open-mindedness and squishy concern for the perspectives of different cultures. “Liberal” ideals, in other words. You could say, roughly, that the Enterprise crew is conservative as a matter of method and liberal as a matter of goal. They sail through the universe with colonialist confidence sticking up for postcolonial ideals. I mean, Starfleet has a Prime Directive … but it’s explicitly non-interventionist! This is so weird that it’s almost hard to notice; your mind just sort of slides over it. But it’s fascinating in numberless ways. Picard is both indisputably the most patriarchal Star Trek captain and indisputably the least likely to punch anyone in the face. No one is more individualist than the individuals of the Enterprise,2 but their individualism has led them to reject most forms of private property (because it actually holds them back, they’re so boldly individualistic) and embrace ultra-centralized health care. The show is able to indulge a serious jones for the classical Western canon — Shakespeare, Mozart, et al. — without really running against the grain of multiculturalism at all, at least by late-’80s standards. Data will be listing some violinists whose style his programming can mimic, and some of them will be Heifetz and some of them will be aliens a guy just made up for the script. It’s totally nuts, but it’s also a fantasy of the American psyche that, if you can get into it, makes a lot of fine things suddenly seem possible, and makes some debilitating anxieties just sort of fall away.”

- ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ turns 25 - Grantland

"The thing I can’t shake, having recently finished all 133 hours of the series (a fact that..."

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 08:59:08 -0400

“The thing I can’t shake, having recently finished all 133 hours of the series (a fact that fills me with something between relief and mourning), is that Data’s positronic brain doesn’t have Wi-Fi. When The Next Generation wants to impress you with the superhuman information-retrieval capabilities of a 24th-century android, it shows him, um, reading really fast. Not that you expect a late-’80s TV show to be remotely accurate with respect to near-future technology, but there’s something about TNG’s enormous pass on networking, that total failure to see it as part of the Federation’s eventual culture, that seems more revealing than any of the technology — warp fields, the iPad — it did successfully predict. There are episodes, kind of a lot of them, actually, in which Data has to be shut down for one reason or another, and one of the other crew members (usually but not always Geordi) pushes the hidden catch on his head that opens his cranial access panel, and a little square of hair swings up off his scalp and you see his metallic skull. And there are tiny banks of Christmas-type LED lights blinking on it in more or less rhythmic sequence, almost like the lights on a wireless modem. But the main impression you get is of the enclosedness of Data’s head, its protected separateness. The idea seems to be that the model for a thinking computer should be not a cloud of information, but a hard shell containing a thoroughly distinct self. By contrast, when Picard is kidnapped and assimilated by the Borg, the race of hive-minded albino cyborgs that poses the major existential threat to the Federation during the series, what’s emphasized is the physical violation this entails, how Picard’s body is ripped open to receive the Borg implants that erase his individual consciousness. The Next Generation is surprisingly anxious about the idea of sharing thoughts in general. With the exception of the telepathic Betazoids, who are mostly seen positively through ship counselor Deanna Troi, a half-Betazoid, creatures that communicate through mind reading or centralized consciousness are either seen as villainous or as so remotely alien that they can’t be comprehended. (This, in a series that usually treats alien races as exaggerations of particular human traits, is exactly the same way that Carrie’s friends on Sex and the City are all concentrated versions of single aspects of Carrie.) Networking, either natural or technological, transgresses against Star Trek’s ideal of individualism, in which personal development is always toward independence, uniqueness, and competence. Picard’s first officer, Will Riker, gains the captain’s trust in the very first episode by turning off the computer’s auto-docking routine and bringing the ship into space-dock by himself. Technology is meant to be a tool that you can use or not; it’s not supposed to change the way you think. No one is ever alone on the Enterprise, but there are depths to which togetherness can’t penetrate.”

- ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ turns 25 - Grantland

"Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were..."

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:59:12 -0400

“Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving - amateurs - we proceed, seeking out the blank places in the map that our favorite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers - should we be lucky enough to find any - some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff we love: to get in on the game. All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.”

- Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends (via invisibleforeigner)

"theological rhetoric is intoxicating, but our task is to communicate the gospel to our world in such..."

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:45:35 -0400

“theological rhetoric is intoxicating, but our task is to communicate the gospel to our world in such a way that it “sings and stings.”
And the time is now for seminary professors and college professors to re-learn what our task is all about. We might teach seminarians and students at advanced levels, but the fundamental goal of all Bible knowledge is to communicate that truth to ourselves and to others so that we can live it out.”

- Westminster and Writing for the Church

"The campy-listening thing, I think, is false. I don’t think that there is any such thing, actually...."

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:49:09 -0400

“The campy-listening thing, I think, is false. I don’t think that there is any such thing, actually. This happens with age, that at some point you might have told yourself and others that you listened to the Backstreet Boys because it was funny. But in fact, you were enjoying it; it’s just a different kind of enjoyment for you. But I don’t think that ironic-distance appreciation is actually a different or lesser appreciation. I think most of that irony is an attempt to say, “These aren’t exactly my kind of people, and I don’t picture myself sounding like that, but I still like it.” I don’t believe in ironic appreciation. I think if you like something, the core of it is you like it.”

- The Believer - Interview with John Darnielle