Sean Connery taught me Microsoft Access today. Well, not really - but he was a Scotsman, and he had a grey beard like Sean Connery. He was also kind of ticked off most of the time, like said Connery, and he wore a funny hat like the same does in all the paparazzi press. Tell you what though, he could TEACH Access. Forms, sub-forms, reports, queries, you name it, we took it on!
Lynn-nore and I had a big talk tonight about my whole thing about "the poor and the flesh." Okay, see, all of my life I have been part of churches that just can't figure out what any of us are supposed to be doing. There is a lot of talk (especially guilt-talk) about should, but nothing very effective; nothing real. At first, it used to make me mad at the church. I even swore off churches altogether cir. 1992. Then, one day, I realized that the problem wasn't this or that church, it was the entire church militant everywhere that had this problem! What does it mean to be the church in the West as it enters into late-modernity? I'm simplifying it to a great extent here, but my best guess so far is summed up in these two words: "flesh" "poor." Karl Barth, following Calvin, said that the last thing human beings want to to do is actually encounter the living God. Religion may even be the best way of avoiding God yet invented - but even religion comes to a full stop before those two little words. Yes, only the cross can stand and say anything in the face of those two nouns, and it says to me that there may be something there after all. I have little idea what it really means to truly advance upon either one, but then again, neither does anyone else. Most of what passes for ministry is one of two things: the application of law (re: using a list to avoid God & make you better than your neighbor, like a list of how many times you've read your Bible or whether you are tithing) or therapy (using your hang-ups to avoid God, or trying to discover and vomit out some inner knot in the hopes that it will help you love better, or that it will give you some power over anxiety or, even worse, using intuitive insight to gain power over other people, or at least reduce them to some innocuous, self-gratifying taxonomy). Really, I didn't mean to go there....
Practically, Kara's getting over an ear infection. Lynn-nore's uncomfortable at 31 weeks along. I'm off to try and order Sunday School material on lifeway's website. I'm also advancing on Greek participles again, ha ha!
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Your comments/thoughts on the flesh/poor relationship is interesting. I'll admit that it is above my head when you get into the more esoteric aspects of theology. (I've been reading Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, but it is more acessible than the average tome on Christian thought/doctrine...and is in keeping with my approach...all Bible, all the time.) My thought is that religon is man's attempt to isolate and create a finite explanation of an infinite God. In reading some of the writings of the church fathers, I realized that the further in time from the apostolic period the writings got, the more they sounded like a fine art student at ETSU. Lots of sound and fury, but signifying..you know. The mainline denominations in America have succeeded in creating an atmosphere that in many ways is like that of Catholic dogma, or in some instances worse, like the scribes and pharisees of Jesus's time. (Since that is a generalization let me say that I do not hold that all denominations or all churches in these denominations are doing this.) The situation is that the bureacratic tendency is a human characteristic and the church is populated by...you guessed it...humans . Why do we seek God but only in certain quanities?
Someone said that most people are unable to hold two opposing thoughts in their head at the same time...atleast thoughts that they know to be in opposition. Why? It takes too long to try and understand an object that has more than two sides. (This may be why painting is far more favored by the masses over sculpture. There is less to look at.) I think that humans are prone to wanting that jingle that makes sense in 10 seconds or less instead of the extended play version. God is most definitely extended play.
That is why there are some that spend their life devoted to God and in His service and there are some who will enter heaven as if by fire. I think God is happy when either happens. I'm sure He would like us all to be the best we can be, and personally that is my prayer for all my brothers and sisters, but He knows the degrees of faith and the level of involvement of each of us. "Are all apostles?"
Really, at the end of the day...people do the best they can "as they see it". As an artist, I've learned that perception is everything and you can help people see, but you can't make them see. Not if seeing takes too much time/effort/thought/...etc....
The beauty is when Christians do care and do seek to really understand the relationship that they have been called into...then life is made into what it can be.
As you say, Jason, we often need to hold two contrary things together for awhile and see if they are as contrary as we once thought. I also like what amounts to your denial of "possible worlds" thinking; God "knows the degrees of faith and the level of involvement of each of us." This is an area in my own thinking that is still being worked out - the relationship between Jesus' complete work and our own calling to pursue holiness. (cf. Rom 6.22) I think you're getting what I'm saying about Barth's critique of religion (and, indeed, Calvin is harsher! Read Institutes II.8!)
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