uninformed and unaffected

"I can say for a fact 'the truth sets me free' - in the sense that I see clearly my faults and human weaknesses - and I go through the valley of death/pain - just to get to the point where I accept that truth and then deal with it honestly and sincerely" (societyVS)

so here's the thing. i'm out for breakfast with this guy and he's talking to me about this bible study that he is beginning to attend. the group is studying the book of romans and he is just really loving the time that is being spent in the scriptures and how much he's learning from it all.

after listening for a bit, i ask

'what part of romans do you like the most?'

i know, i know... dumb question. it's a totally heavy book which doesn't really fit into 'like/dislike' thinking. it's full of really strong counsel on how to live life as a follower of Christ.

anyway, he begins to quote romans 12 really really fast...

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

what makes this all rather tough for me is that there are many aspects of the life being lived that directly contradict this memorized and recited moral soundbyte. we have spoken of so many things, but all i can think of is that once again these scriptural words are being quoted from one whose life continues to exist uninformed and even unaffected by them.

honesty and truth must go together. it's not the loving of truth that bears the fruit of freedom, it's the living of it.

rabbinical yoke?

recently in another conversation, a friend of mine figuratively mentioned "following the advice of a rabbi..."

which reminded me of an msn convo i had awhile back with societyVS about the people to whose teaching we subscribe and are most likely to readily cite. i know that, apart from musicians and poets who package human interpersonal and intrapersonal insights into soundbites that i can subliminally feed upon while driving in my car, there are a couple of writers whom i regularly go to for a word of truth. i'm sure many of us have these: it is probably telling to simply click on one's online profile for further details there...

anyway, something i read recently in velvet elvis by rob bell...

(discussed briefly and cross-linked in one of my favourite websites:
www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2005/06/churches_are_li.html)

... about the traditional role of the rabbi seems to be relevant:

Now the ancient rabbis understood that the Bible is open-ended and has to be interpreted. And they understood that their role in the community was to study and mediate and discuss and pray and then make those decisions. Rabbis are like interpreters, helping people understand what God is saying to them through the text and what it means to live out the text...

Different rabbis had different sets of rules, which were really different lists of what they forbade and what they permitted. A rabbi's set of rules and lists, which was really that rabbi's interpretation of how to live the Torah, was called that rabbi's yoke. When you followed a certain rabbi, you were following him because you believed that rabbi's set of interpretations were the closest to what God intended through the Scriptures. And when you followed that rabbi, you were taking up that rabbi's yoke.

One rabbi even said his yoke was easy.

The intent then of a rabbi having a yoke wasn't just to interpret the words correctly; it was to live them out. In the jewish context, action was always the goal. It still is.

Rabbis would spend hours discussing with their students what it meant to live out a certain text. If a student made a suggestion about what a certain text meant and the rabbi thought that the student had totally missed the point, the rabbi would say, "You have abolished the Torah," which meant that in the rabbi's opinion, the student wasn't anywhere near what God wanted. But if the student got it right, if the rabbi thought the student had grasped God's intention in the text, the rabbi would say, "You have fulfilled the Torah."

Notice what Jesus says in one of his first messages: "I have not come to abolish [the Torah] but to fulfill [it]. He was essentially saying, "I didn't come to do away with the words of God; I came to show people what it looks like when the Torah is lived out perfectly, right down to the smallest punctuation marks."

"I'm here to put flesh and blood on the words."

Most rabbis taught the yoke of a well respected rabbi who had come before them. So if you visited a synogogue and the local rabbi (Torah teacher) was going to teach, you might hear that this rabbi teaches in the name of Rabbi So-and-So. If you were familiar with the yoke of Rabbi So-and-So, then you would know what to expect from this rabbi.

Every once in a while, a rabbi would come along who was teaching a new yoke, a new way of interpreting the Torah. This was rare and extraordinary.

Bell goes on to point out that, contained in all the talk about binding and loosing and keys to the kingdom, the yoke of Christ is to give his followers permission and the authority to debate and interpret scripture responsibly...

And not only is he giving them authority, but he is saying that when they do debate and discuss and pray and wrestle and then make decisions about the Bible, somehow God in heaven will be involved...
(rob bell, velvet elvis, exerpted pp 46-48, 2005)

cracking codes?

"Some of these clowns even seem to misrepresent scripture and take it way out of whack..." (societyVs)

yep, one of the main reasons why many people choose to disbelieve is because it's just too hard to buy into what some are selling as a Word from God.

kinda like driving in a blizzard- it's a whiteout and you nearly hit the ditch on your right, so you crank the wheel and head over to the ditch on the left. it's keeping it between the lines that keeps you alive and moving ever closer to the end of the journey, yeah?

recently i was sitting in a bible class being held at our church on correct interpretation of scripture- ie: equipping people to not only NOT misinterpret what scripture is saying in their own personal quiet time with God, but also providing them with some tools to discern just what is scriptural and what is a load of self-driven personal hooey.

our teacher is a seminary professor giving us a heckuva deal on some awesome bible-school teaching just because he wants the church to be able to read the bible 'for all its worth.'

(the name of the textbook for the course http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310384915/ref=si_1_1/702-6600521-7812852)

so anyway, to illustrate a point about wrongly interpreted conclusions, we turned to the book of nahum and then watched a video clip...

nahum 2.4 says "The chariots storm through the streets, rushing back and forth through the squares. They look like flaming torches; they dart about like lightning."

well, this guy on tv proceeded to enthusiastically explain how the prophet writing this passage is really foretelling fast'n'furious-type streetracing in the final days, rather than the sacking of the city of nineveh some eighty years later...

it appears as though scripture can be much like statistics: you can use it to say just about anything if you have the imagination to do so. the classic approach of proof-texting (coming up with an idea and then finding scriptures to be taken out of context in order to validate the idea, while ignoring others that contradict) is a great example of how scripture gets misused regularly by well-intentioned people. often, like in the passage cited above from nahum, people focus on some connections while completely disregarding other contradictory ones that exist. one thing that scripture doesn't do is contradict itself in the bigger picture. the contradictions we find therein usually have more to do with us than with scripture- with our read on it rather than what we're actually reading in it...

the correct handling of scripture is a sacred task to which we are all called in our discipleship. however, those charged by God with teaching or preaching ministries have even greater responsibility there because they are using scripture to lead others onward. taking this responsibility seriously allows our stories of God to be more than simply theological gossip.

okay, i can't take it anymore- i have to mention da vinci code (don't worry, only briefly, and as an example of what i'm talking about). take the whole grail/chalice theory...

for me, it's important to remember that the grail/chalice theory is a theory... and not a particularly theological one at that. it has more to do with conspiracy, paranoia and politics than with God.

am i saying that this theory is 'a load of self-driven personal hooey'?
nope. not qualified to make that call.

(note: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310273722/qid=1148496606/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_3_2/701-7380559-6041950
lee strobel and gary poole have written a book called exploring the da vinci code... i'm not saying this is the only book to read on the theories put forth in the recent novel and even more recent film- i haven't read it... i'm just saying that, among the plethora of reactive books having been written on this topic, the strobel/poole book promises to be responsive by virtue of its authors. strobel has brought us strong and balanced reads like a case for Christ; a case for the creator and a case for faith)

i'm saying that we need to be regularly studying and sorting through God's word so that we know what is actually in scripture and what these scriptures tell us about God himself.

in attempting to develop one's own personal theology, it's important to be active without necessarily being activistic- to remember that personal theology is personal... there's a good one to shoot for. we don't need to march around with placards proclaiming for all and sundry that we are militant, underthinking, over-reacting ethnocentrics with an agenda of conquest. we have to come to a decision for ourselves, sorting out what is figurative and what is literal and how these passages studied are set against the larger whole of scripture and history.

let's dig into the theories about God that are all around us and use scripture in order to seek the truth about God in this or that context. let's identify what about any theory impacts our faith, and be willing to thoughtfully consider the ideas of others in the light of scripture. in doing so, let's be both willing to consider scripture in such a way that it can still be the revealed word of God (even if this means changing one's traditional and time-honoured interpretation of a passage) and also intentional about discerning from the original context, genre and apparent intent of the scriptures being set forth as evidence, whether a theory is biblical or merely fanciful.

here's an example. i know i've told this story before- perhaps you've even read it on this blog- i don't remember... all apologies. anyway, during my educational internship, we decided to hold a creation/evolution debate with eighth grade students. notes went home to be signed and off we went. sadly, the creationists used only the bible in their research, while the evolutionists used the whole library. at the end of the debate, we had an anthropologist and a lutheran minister come in on two separate days to share their perspectives with the kids.

the minister began his comments by saying 'i think you've been reading this book (bible) wrong- remember, it was never written to be treated like a science textbook. it was not written to tell us what happened, but who did it." yada yada yada

the anthropologist came the next day (it was early december- blizzard season) and said 'i think you need to rethink the role of science. if you are driving a car in a blizzard and it breaks down, you can pray if you like, but it probably won't make the car start- use science for that. however, if you are looking for the meaning of life in that moment, science has no wisdom to offer.' yada yada yada

making sense of this physical experience called life on fallen planet earth has largely to do with viewing things through the right lenses. once we've figured out what we believe then we can shine that light into the everyday context of our relationships because there are probably people all around us who are seeking the truth and hoping that we'll help them find it.

i'm to be a candle shining in their darkest night
not a blinding flash of light

lest ye be

"It is too easy to judge people anyways, were idiot humans that know less then we think yet percieve to have all the answers because some book said so." (SocietyVs)

yes- to presume to have arrived is to make plain how great the distance yet to travel. my gosh, i hate it when i sound like a fortune cookie!

what i mean by all that drivel is simply that i agree... especially with the 'too easy' part. nobody's got it all together.

a friend of mine and i were talking recently about whether the difference between judgement and condemnation is simply semantics... you see, we are all reminded again and again from others that we mustn't be quick to judge- however, these statements usually come from people who are busy judging pastors and the like as being too judgemental. i grow frustrated with this whole reverse bigotry thing that leaps to the conclusion that, by trying to understand the behaviours of another in order to help them move ahead in their faith journey, a pastor is sitting in judgement over a parishioner. it's more a case of trying to walk alongside someone, offering some coaching.

in my view, judgement is being able to weigh facts justly and make a decision towards a resulting plan of action. our judgement should be a good thing, an endowment.

what qualifications must a judge in a court of law have? i don't know, but i imagine that, apart from very specific credentialling, things like extensive personal legal experience, a keen understanding of the laws of the land and an awareness of precident all have to be part of the deal. there is, however, one more thing: wise decisiveness. the ability to use all of the information available in order to set out a plan which, through due process, intentionally brings justice back into balance.

i'm not talking about corruption and i'm not talking about abuse of an office- we know those things happen and we know that they are wrong. i'm just acknowledging that in our culture, where the judicial process is still somewhat respected, the judges are not typically suspect- it's the lawyers that often bear the burden of our mistrust, largely because of our huge need for them, and the suspician that arises out of needing someone and having to place our faith and our cash in their integrity as they interact within a system that we find completely alienating due to its jargon and rhetoric alone, much less its power to which we are subject... (but that's a whole nother blog.)

where it breaks down for people is in confusing judgement with condemnation. i think that when we flippantly quote the bible to each other 'judge not, lest ye be judged' we need to be very clear as to what we are really saying and to ensure that we are not implying the condemnation of others. most of the time, when people remind us of how we are not to judge another, they are speaking about the importance of not condemning... sadly, they are often doing simply that to those whom they presume to admonish- defaulting in their suspician to the notion that anyone who uses their endowment of God-given judgement does so in order to condemn others and move ahead in some line.

the easy condemnation call is a dangerous default that hurts people who are just trying to live their lives, attending to the needs made evident to them. perhaps it would help if we spoke of active discernment (in the non spiritual-gift sense) and the importance of applying that discernment in those moments where we are tempted to condemn another.

have i been hurt by this default of suspicion?
maybe once or twice- does it show?

'others'

Same-sex marriage law passes 158-133
CBC News
The Liberals' controversial same-sex marriage legislation has passed final reading in the House of Commons, sailing through in a 158-133 vote...
( http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/06/28/samesex050628.html )

obviously, i've been thinking about this for awhile. (bill c-33 passed back in june and here it is the end of july...) there have been so many openly expressed positions already, that posting something seemed a bit pointless until i got into a conversation within a small bible study i lead. it seemed to me that, even with all of the political rhetoric and (self-) righteous posturing by so many, once again the everyday people with whom i try to interact regularly were still feeling a bit lost as to what they were to believe, how they were supposed to express it and why. such is life with almost any political football, i think. there are efforts made to inform 'the masses,' but in most cases this informing takes on the added colour of persuasion... probably because we have a really tough time actually being objective about anything.

(nice thing about a blog is that, for the most part, we all acknowledge that the writing is just a personal point of view, taken or left by the reader- a nice kinda freedom in that to just be- and in so being, being honestly, yeah? of course this doesn't address the whole problem of not being honest with ourselves, but that's probably a whole nother blog!)

so what to say to the 'sheep' on this issue? well, i'm not sure that the role of believers has really changed that much, regardless of the legislation. it is still our job to uphold the traditional (dareisay 'biblical' without the whole notion being confused by all who are eager to point out the many rather odd eastern cultural spins on marriage and concubinery that are also found in the bible?) concept of marriage and the nuclear family in an age where it would appear as though almost anything short of polygamy goes.

recently we (staff at my church) were asked to wear a yellow ribbon to express our position on the recent debate. i found this uncomfortable, not because of what i stand for, but because so often people misinterpret this stand as some form of spiritualized bigotry. without the chance to speak openly and directly to someone who inquires about the significance of the symbol, i was fearful that others would make presumptions about my faith and my God without actually asking. however, when asked, i found that the conversation was quite natural.

(tangent: now that i think of it, wearing crosses and the like is probably the same thing... nobody asks what the cross around my neck means- yet everyone probably makes assumptions about its significance and meaning based on their own experiences with people wearing that symbol too.)

in my view, the key is to share our biblical view face to face with those who inquire, and to use every opportunity to uphold the sanctity of the institution of marriage within the law rather than without it. in order to share the biblical view, or the denomination's company line on it, we need to know what that is. below is an exerpt from an email thread that spun out of the initial conversation at the bible study. my friend was having trouble sorting out the harshly expressed homophobia of his youth with his newly acquired understanding of the grace of God- he had now swung hard the other way to an 'anything goes because God loves us all' theology of grace and morality in attempts to somehow redeem himself from his loveless youth which he recognized as fascist and wrong. when our morality pendulum is permitted to swing back and forth in response to our life experiences, the end result is that we don't really subscribe to anything constant. my friend was frustrated by this, wanting to share Jesus' love for people, but confusing that with permissiveness.
***

i agree strongly with your statement about judgement. there is usually no love in the judgemental pronouncements we make about others- most of the time it is about 'legalism'. one of the things that God has given us as a light to guide us through life's issues is his Word. if we are careful to live life according to it, to 'walk in the light as He is in the light' (1john 1.6-7) then we are free to live according to his original vision for us.

your redemption is free, man. free to you anyway- it cost Jesus everything as we read in phil2. though you still feel the burden of your past, please remember that Jesus died to take that burden off of you. to keep taking it back is to take back that which Jesus has offered to take upon himself on the cross. it's like he bought your spiritual peace with his blood and now you don't even get what he paid for. don't worry about trying to rectify the mistakes of your youth, pal. they're long gone.

we all know that individuals have to make up their own minds on social issues, but part of that mind-making has to do with being informed. it is every believer's responsibility to develop convictions based on a synthesis of scripture and everyday life and relationships. it is only in order to offer some further perspective for you on this matter that i am sending the Bishop's words.

so, as to gay people's 'right' to marry and have the relationship legitimized in the eyes of God and man through a christian ceremony that acknowledges it as in accordance with God's design and plan, i think that taking a close look at the bishop's statement and the scriptures cited will help in clearing up the 'confusion'.

here, for your consideration, is the free methodist church in canada's stand on the matter, as found in the manual. http://www.fmc-canada.org/

(and by the way, for the detectives out there, there are pictures of jollybeggar and mrs jollybeggar in a commissioning service that took place in july... as well as one old guy in the youth band that also looks strangely familiar... thanks for pointing these out, Pensive Johnny !)


¶630.2.8 Homosexual Behaviour

Homosexual behaviour is condemned by the Scriptures as immoral because it is a distortion of God’s created order, a practice contrary to nature (Romans 1:26,27; I Corinthians 6:9,10; I Timothy 1:8-10). The sanctity of marriage and the family is to be protected against all manner of conduct that moves away from the Creator’s design.

This behaviour is contrary to God’s intention for humans and therefore harmful to those who participate in and form habits toward such behaviour.

Homosexual behaviour is different from homosexual inclination; and persons with homosexual inclinations are accountable to God for their behaviour (Romans 14:12). Because Christians are part of fallen humanity we must deal with many inclinations to sin, but we trust that the grace of God is available and completely adequate to forgive and heal us (I John 1:9; Hebrews 7:25; Luke 4:18; I Corinthians 6:9-11).

While some Christians, regrettably, violate the church’s historic commitment to the deep worth of all persons, The Free Methodist Church in Canada affirms it (See ¶630.2.1). Therefore, Free Methodists have a responsibility to be God’s agents of healing, ministering in love to those involved in homosexual behaviour and giving them support as they learn to live a Christian life that is wholesome and pure.
***

personally, i feel that this statement is a balanced one in that it denotes a crucial difference between inclination and behaviour. people become slaves to their drives: nietzsche said that. however, it doesn't have to be that way, for the grace of God is free to all.

i realize, as i've participated in conversations that go this direction, that transgendered people and people with same-sex inclination can be hurt by well-meaning moralists who draw easy lines between behaviours that feel so natural and things like theft or murder. truth is, there are no easy lines. scripture does not support sexual lifestyle decisions that go in same-sex directions... however, scripture also fails to support the presumption that anyone with same-sex inclinations is somehow outside of the invitation that God made through Jesus to cast aside the earmarks of our old life in order to enjoy freedom within his grace to be all that we were intended to be when God dreamed us up in the first place. Jesus was always there in the middle of the crowd, showing love to the marginalized, the lost and the confused. he was enjoying supper with 'sinners and others' (people whose lives went in directions that were even too much for the new testament writers to describe in their gospels) much to the disgust of the religious right, and only preached against those who walked around lording their legalism over people.

i have gay friends and they know how i feel on this issue. they also know that i love them dearly. until we can be loving revolutionaries, do we subscribe to anything higher than the pharisees standing outside of matthew's party in matt9.10-13?

again and again i find myself marvelling at how Jesus dealt with people- somehow able to be openly loving and righteous at the same time.

finding neo

Bigbro said:
Fundamentalism is about 'not needing an explanation.'

Oh, sure, there are those weekly explanations of a particular scripture that is pretty much explained the same way it was explained the last time the subject came up, but that's merely repetitiveness. Rote helps one not forget a lesson so as that lesson never changes regardless of the century in progress.

It all comes down to not needing an explanation. Not having to muddle about with explanations makes it all that much easier for everyone involved. Kind of like going to a Halloween party where no one wears masks

well, i'm afraid that i have to beg to differ with a couple different things here. i don't think that fundamentalism is as much about not needing an explanation as it is about presuming that a literal interpretation of scripture is the only explanation worth considering. this is probably why there is this whole problem with the weekly 'explanations' being all the same. it would be hard to take anything non-literal to fundamentalist masses without someone crying 'foul!'

i also disagree with the idea that not having to muddle about with explanations makes it all that much easier for everyone involved. it is the ethnocentric presumption that no one has to explain anything or be somehow intellectually and spiritually accountable to anyone or anything else that results in so much really bad theology. people make wild logical leaps from idea to idea, like neo in the matrix- as if denying the fact that there is gravity and believing that it has no hold upon him will, in fact, release him from its causal grip. arguing that spirituality need not be in any way connected to the physical world causes me to ask 'why do we have to bother with physical existence then?'

the 'merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream' approach to the interrelation of our spiritual and physical existences is probably only easy on those who subscribe to it. it drives a lot of other people crazy on both sides of the line drawn by Jesus in the sand. it is as much a source of frustration to those who, although holding to a faith in the same means of approaching God, differ from its spin on conclusive evidence, as it is to those who do not hold to this faith at all.

nobody likes being judged, or having their faith relationship (or non-relationship for that matter) with God through Christ presumed about, and a hardline of faith against a really fuzzy line of logic or reason can blur many things that are worth talking about in favour of details that become huge arguments for general disbelief. since we discovered in the garden, figuratively or literally, that to truly understand the difference between good and evil we simply needed to experience a little bit of evil first hand (and thus seperate ourselves from the holy realm, driving a necessary chasm between the temporal physical and the eternal spiritual forever) and then deal with the consequences of our decision-making, we've wrestled with the apparent disparity between our intellectual capacity for reason and the whole of existence which appears to be not only very very big but, at times, very unreasonable as well.

where it goes all wrong for me is when there are rectifiable differences that are stubbornly ignored. you find a neo in the most surprising places, often wearing some very familiar faces.

a bunch of us were all grappling with an entirely different issue the other day when a dear friend of mine surprised me by launching some SCUD missile logic into an otherwise really engaging round-the-table discussion. he said 'i have trouble with people who say that they believe the bible as long as it agrees with science... i believe science as long as it agrees with the bible, no further.' from here he shared his belief that the whole carbon-dating process is an atheist conspirator's distraction and that the earth is only six thousand years old and so on.

now, this guy is awesome and i love him dearly, but because i knew that we'd just get into an argument that would go round and round and take over the meeting from there on, i left it alone in spite of the fact that i vehemently disagreed with his position. what made me uncomfortable was the feeling in me that, because i was silent, those around the table would think i agreed. easier for everyone else? maybe, but that collective ease came at the price of my own personal peace.

you see, recently i posted a bit on 'five things i don't get.' this was one that almost made my top 5 list:
why people see creation theories and evolution theories as diametrically opposed and in all ways contradictory. a theory can't prove or disprove God. it can only strengthen your faith in its hypothesis.

but here's where the "darwin/TRUTH" picture above comes in. i very strongly agree with this image, but not in the way my friend thinks, judging from my silence that day. you see, i think truth is a way bigger fish than any one theory, and that, if we are to cut open the TRUTH fish, we'll probably find the partially digested remains of the darwin fish inside its entrails. some of the theory will have made truth stronger, and some of it will have already become deep-sea excrement.

once again, the challenge for me is to be able to tell the difference, being careful to clean the fish thoroughly before i throw it onto my barBQ wrapped in foil to be cooked and served to my friends as a the maincourse of a well-balanced meal.
***

disclaimer: i know that it sounds like i'm doing a lot of judging of my own here... please forgive me for this. i have not yet found a way to articulate objections objectively.

travel guide

at the end of a lengthy and heartfelt open letter to christians contesting the integrity of authorship and revealed divine wordship of the bible (which has resulted in an engaging dialogue with well over thirty-five interactive comments at the time of this posting) Icarus said something which triggered an idea for me:

These are just some philosophical problems I have with the idea of revealed religion that I need to have answered adequately before I even begin to examine the actual contents of the Bible. If you can please answer these questions for me, then we can move on to the questions I have about the actual contents and merits of what the book says

here's an idea: what if the Bible could be compared to a map or travel guide that leads us to a relationship with God?

a travel guide is not going to magically take you to another place, nor is reading it the same as travelling abroad. it is a guide which attempts to open up the destination point for the reader. it gives the reader some hints as to how to get the most out of their journey- how to effectively make the journey, through rich memories drawn from experience, part of life from then on. a Bible is not going to magically transport one into the presence of God, and reading it is not a replacement for a relationship with God. reading it is a means by which people can approach God and enter into a relationship with God that affects the rest of their life and beyond.

the thing about the travel guide analogy is that there are many travel guides published for popular areas. cosmic connections are, these days, a popular area and there are many 'holy writings' published.

okay, fine. when someone whom we do not know writes a book about brazil- this is going to be our destination for the purpose of this analogy- we do not (among people i know, anyway) check with interpol or some other international organization to determine whether the profile of the author is truthful- whether the author of the guide has, in fact, been more than a casual observer of the country of brazil. we defer our responsibility in this area to the publishers of the guide, presuming that they have a screening process that ensures the integrity of the books they publish- we even ask people who are familiar with travel in general which resources are the most informative and reliable.

and let's face it: there are some travel guides out there that have a lot of the general milieu summarized, but are replete with inconsistencies, poorly worded directions and badly cartographed maps. they claim to be user-friendly guides, but are, in fact, frustratingly user-hostile.

so what do we do when we want to go to brazil? first, we ask everyone we know if they've been there. if we find someone who has, we ask them about brazil and about their personal experiences with brazil, recognizing that talking about or reading about brazil is very different from actually going there. we watch t.v. shows. we go do websites (speaking of credibility issues... woah- don't get me started) and with our friend's help (or the help of a good travel agent- one who makes it their business to know how to get someone to brazil)we set up our connections... or we think about the conversation for days and end up setting up the connection all by ourselves via the net. then, having decided upon the direction and timeframe of our trek, we start reading the guides in preparation for the trip.

but the real lifechange comes when we actually arrive there, having done everything we could to prepare ourselves, only to discover that no amount of preparation could approximate what it actually feels like to be there.i think that experiencing God is like this.the trick(?) is to find someone who is experiencing God (in the analogy-the friend who has been to brazil) and open the dialogue face to face.

***
so then icarus made this comment, knowing full well that i wouldn't be able to just sit there are read it without continuing on deeper into the foul nether regions of analogyland... (darn guy!) and from this point i began speaking more directly to icarus (hence all the 'you' stuff) in second person. however, i'm just too lazy to change all of that stuff here... sorry.
***

Interesting analogy with the Brazil trip. But the problem comes in when you go through all those motions, hop on the plane and then after a 10 hour flight you realize "Hey, there is no Brazil."

being that the blog is called 'the flights of icarus goodman' i find the whole idea of a ten hour (or nineteen year) flight only to discover there is, in fact, no brazil a tragedy of classical proportion.

but it's a little off.

you never got there, man. you never actually set foot in brazil. if i recall correctly something you wrote awhile back, you went 'through all those motions' and even hopped on the plane- but then during the ten-hour flight you grew restless and started to read other travel guides.

these new guides were ones that you hadn't read before leaving- ones that pushed hard to convince you that there was no brazil, illustrated with charicatures of buffoons who are such bad travellers that it wouldn't really matter where they were going for readers young and old to be resolute in their desire to avoid at all costs any destination these travellers might promote. problem was, these travellers looked familiar and at times you had even felt like one of them (which didn't sit so well, even at the time) and so the doubts and the restlessness grew.

eventually, you had had enough and, having fashioned wings of wax during the flight, stepped out of the plane somewhere over the ocean. with the wind in your ears and a plane moving off in the distance, your focus- upon being free of the plane and its destination- was now upon the wonder and joy of flight, recognizing that to fly too close to the sun might melt your wings and to fly too close to the water might restrict both your vision and your freedom to experiment with flight itself. (ie jonathan livingstone seagull by richard bach)

at least, that's how it sounded to me
***

while at university i lived next door to a 'new-age' bookstore, from which i procured a bunch of fun books: lao tzu's "tao of life"; swami prabhavananda's "bhagavad-gita"; "the gospel according to zen- beyond the death of God"; baigent, leigh and lincoln's "the holy blood and the holy grail" (a resource for don brown's davinci thing) and others. add to these the stuff i've read since (figured i'd quit with the cheesey name-dropping) and you have many voices carrying on a dialogue which shapes and reshapes your perspective, sometimes daily.

there was a passage of scripture that resonated within the caverns of my mind that i was so eager to fill up, and essentially bathed the place with light enabling me to see the faces that were engaged in the dialogue even now:

'see to it that no one holds you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.'
(col 2.8)

the word 'hollow' is probably the most important word in that verse other than the name of Christ. what it says to me is that pure intellectual reasoning will inspire and develop the mind, but might be comparable to misering (?) in that eventually mortal life in the physical realm is done and everyone is once again leveled.

the whole 'you can't take it with you' thing.

now that's fine because life was full of ideas and experiences that make us undeniably rich in many ways, and if this is the proverbial 'it' and all that we've experienced is reduced to what we had the chance to pass on to others- if that is our immortality- then great. but if there is, in fact, something more than spiritual sea below us to which we eventually come to land, then we have spent the whole of our physical existence on the hollow- chasing, as solomon said, after wind.
***
check out the complete dialogue and the original post at http://icarusgoodman.blogspot.com/2005/04/letter-to-christians.html

poetic license

john (http://penseethoughts.blogspot.com/) said:
"The relationship between poetry and truth is key but it seems power resides with poetry when, as Christ puts it 'the people are hungry' whereas power resides with truth when people are being fed meat and potatoes."

i like the notion that poetry is sometimes the only means by which the truth can get in.

language is like digital sampling. the greater the bitrate, the truer the sample is to the sonic essence of the original sound. poetic language contains not only the factual information, but the emotive colour of the factual information as well- in many ways it is a more complete 'sample' of an idea. not only this but metaphors are so much more participative, inviting thoughtful interpretation which takes so much more involvement than simply accepting or rejecting an idea does.

Jesus' use of metaphor seems to go intentionally in one of two directions: obscuring truth to invite greater hunger for it and greater satisfaction upon its discovery; and fleshing truth out in order to make it palpable for willy lowman.

i debated this idea at length with a friend of mine once. he was a seminarian, and was in love with his books (as can happen when you spend so much quality time with them!) the idea that we were attempting to find middle ground on was this: the bible is written in ancient aramaic (old testament) and greek (new testament) with odds and sods of linguistic hybrids thrown in here and there... therefore one needs to have experience with the ancient languages in order to properly handle scripture- in order to divine truth from the words.

obviously, not knowing a stitch of any of the languages in question, i disagreed on the grounds that God's word is truth and truth is timeless and unchanging. the trick for us today is to be able to discern the difference between timeless truth and culturally specific traditions. truth or tradition: how can we tell the difference if we don't know squat about ancient peoples? well that's probably a whole nother blog, but the way i tried to make my point was using poetry...

i asked a bunch of questions which basically underscored the richness of our shared cultural experiences:
both born in the same country in the same basic time period
both speaking the same mother tongue
both raised in traditional nuclear families
both schooled in the same language
both religiously raised and trained in the same denomination
both pursued secular employment before heading into ministry

alright enough already... so the point?
easy. i asked him what i meant when i wrote these lyrics:

circumstances change but the needs are still the same
people still need love and people still love to complain
everybody dances but no one wants to stay behind to pay the band
at the foot of the cross we gape at our loss
holding bloody hammers in our hands
its the moment of choosing between life and simply living alone

well that's hardly fair. i held all the cards. no matter what he said i could have said he was wrong... but i didn't because that would have nullified anything of value that i was trying to say. he gave the perfect answer anyway...

"i don't know- i can tell you what it says to me, though."

bingo. now obviously my stuff is pretty skimpy on truth, and helplessly incompatible with scripture, but the idea that, with poetry, many lessons can be learned from the same passage is a good one. every time i pick up my bible i try to discover something new in it that i've never seen before. the search for a new idea amidst ancient words is staggeringly humbling, because of all the defaults that we have to undo, but it is also incredibly rewarding because we grow in the process.

(note- VERY important: upon arriving at a 'new spin,' the next task is, of course, to run it through the gauntlet: there are things that are very hard to prove, but very easy to disprove. what can you find that disagrees? on what grounds do the disagreements stand? is this consistent with the deep water issues of scripture? all that. otherwise, a creative person can arrive at some pretty weird conclusions if studying the bible in a vacuum! i love the ongoing theological dialogue between frankie dunn and his priest in 'million dollar baby'... take your local preacher or scriptural authority out and bounce ideas around- benefit from HIS/HER years of study to further enrich your relationship with the God of the scriptures.)

however, i'm not getting the 'power of meat and potatoes' bit of john's post. what i take from it is that when people are accustomed to logical and factual discourse, there's not a lot of power in linguistic colourature. i certainly have friends that would agree with a memo more readily than they would agree with a sonnet.

me? i believe that while some books pontificate, other books sing-
yet both can contain truth.

“Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge… there is a great deal I do NOT want to know… even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows…”
(Nietzsche- Twilight of the Idols)

"What is truth?" Pilate asked. (John 18.38)