The outer layer of our skin is truly the very end of us and our possessions. Here’s what I mean, I, Alex Early, can go no further than my own epidermis. That is the boundary, the property border, if you will of my existence and ownership. I can not say that my home or automobile is truly “mine.” I may have written checks and paid for these things, but they are not going to be mine in 50 years. I will be dead. They will belong to someone else.
My kidneys. I could say that they are mine because they are contained within me. But, even that is a stretch, given that with modern technology and my lack of concern for my kidneys after I am dead, I can be called a “donor.” I donate my kidneys to science.
Still, someone has to come and take them from me.
I don’t own anything is what I am trying to say. Someone can come and steal my car. Someone can cheat me out of five dollars. Someone can even come to my dead body and take organs out of me and I won’t even have a say in it at that point.
This is why Jesus says “store up your treasures where moth and rust can not destroy and where thieves can not break in and steal.” The only thing that I truly have that no one can physically come and take away from me is my faith. No one can lay their hands on a belief.
That is the beauty of it. This is why I should nurture my faith. I should give myself to prayer, fasting, study, and Christian community for the sake of nurturing the only thing that can not be stolen or damaged.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
spirit & bone marrow? (Google Earth)
I just came across this verse in the Bible this morning and just had to write something down in response.
Do you ever experience something and just feel like your encounter isn't validated until you finally get to tell someone?
I do.
"As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything" - Ecclesiastes 11.5.
I will not attempt to give a thorough theological exegesis of this verse. Some theologians will spend their time wondering and debating about when the human spirit comes into existence (before time and creation, somewhere in the mind of God, or at birth, or at an age of accountability, etc.). Surely this is not what our Eastern King was writing about. Our Western minds love to miss the point so often.
Today, I do not wish to miss the point.
Today, it is simple. That is, my mind is simple. I can not understand the spiritual "beginning" of man, nor can I understand the mind and work of God who creates, "ex nihilo."
Passages and truths like this remind me of my smallness. Last week was the first time I ever used google earth. This also was quite an experience. I zoomed in and out all over London (our new home in about 66 days!!!). I looked at London School of Theology's football (soccer) filed and saw three men talking there by a tree. Then I zoomed out...all the way out to the satellite.
Needless to say, I felt very very small and it feels wonderful.
Do you ever experience something and just feel like your encounter isn't validated until you finally get to tell someone?
I do.
"As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything" - Ecclesiastes 11.5.
I will not attempt to give a thorough theological exegesis of this verse. Some theologians will spend their time wondering and debating about when the human spirit comes into existence (before time and creation, somewhere in the mind of God, or at birth, or at an age of accountability, etc.). Surely this is not what our Eastern King was writing about. Our Western minds love to miss the point so often.
Today, I do not wish to miss the point.
Today, it is simple. That is, my mind is simple. I can not understand the spiritual "beginning" of man, nor can I understand the mind and work of God who creates, "ex nihilo."
Passages and truths like this remind me of my smallness. Last week was the first time I ever used google earth. This also was quite an experience. I zoomed in and out all over London (our new home in about 66 days!!!). I looked at London School of Theology's football (soccer) filed and saw three men talking there by a tree. Then I zoomed out...all the way out to the satellite.
Needless to say, I felt very very small and it feels wonderful.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Spoils of the Spoiled.
The movie Blood Diamond is a movie based on what is going on the world today. This article is not going to give all of the details of the movie. I just noticed a couple of lines from the movie that would serve to sustain a very true point regarding the fallacy in every human heart. This fallacy is known as “greed.”
Leonardo Decaprio plays the role of Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler from South Africa that takes diamonds from Kenya across the border into Libya. From there, the diamonds go to India and eventually London, and then around the world. There is a vault in London underground in where thousands of diamonds are stored. The goal is to keep the diamonds out of sight so that he demands stays high but the supply is thought to be “low.” Therefore they are now rare and should cost more than they are actually worth.
These are called “blood diamonds” because they are being used to purchase arms and finance civil war.
This is a story displaying genuine greed. Millions are killed or put into concentration camps while others are put to work. That is, to look for diamonds and give them to the oppressors.
At one point in the film, a man that operates an orphanage for refugee children asks Danny Archer “Would you say that people are inherently good?” Archer responds, “No. They are just people.” The man says, “Exactly. It is what people do that make them good or bad.”
“No. They are just people.”
They are just people.
They are just people.
These men conclude that men and women are completely neutral in the world regarding morality and that their morality is ultimately determined by what their actions say. A man’s actions make him either good or evil. But doesn’t this sound backwards? Shouldn’t our morality determine what we do? Shouldn’t what we do be conceived in our minds before we actually do something? This is the only thing that makes sense.
Thoughts precede actions.
Blueprints precede constructions.
Later on, Archer says in a moment of reflection, Archer says to a journalist, after she continues to pry into his own evil life, trying to help him come to grips that he too is an oppressor even though he may not be directly holding the whip in hand… “I sometimes wonder will God ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other? Then I look around and say, ‘God left this place a long time ago.’ So what’s the point, huh?” He says this in such a regretful tone as his eyes tear up.
I’m listening to this song called The Spoils of the Spoiled right now and the lyric says it all…
“But, it's all in fun and sin until someone calls it in. The cycle comes around again. But, I'm older now, and don't you know, I've figured out the antidote. It overwhelms, engulfed in smoke. It's all we can to cope. Goddamn these idle hands as hindsight can. Our hopes and plans are unfulfilled. It's overwhelming.”
Sounds pretty honest.
Did God leave because we are evil or is it the fact that we are so evil that we think God left? I bank on the latter.
Even looking at the conversations that Archer has, he believes that:
1. That actions determine one’s moral condition.
2. That God is absent because our actions are evil.
This is what depravity looks like as it comes to fruition. Besides, his whole life as a diamond smuggler, Archer obsessed with greed and this tells us that he is dead to God, not that God is absent.
Leonardo Decaprio plays the role of Danny Archer, a diamond smuggler from South Africa that takes diamonds from Kenya across the border into Libya. From there, the diamonds go to India and eventually London, and then around the world. There is a vault in London underground in where thousands of diamonds are stored. The goal is to keep the diamonds out of sight so that he demands stays high but the supply is thought to be “low.” Therefore they are now rare and should cost more than they are actually worth.
These are called “blood diamonds” because they are being used to purchase arms and finance civil war.
This is a story displaying genuine greed. Millions are killed or put into concentration camps while others are put to work. That is, to look for diamonds and give them to the oppressors.
At one point in the film, a man that operates an orphanage for refugee children asks Danny Archer “Would you say that people are inherently good?” Archer responds, “No. They are just people.” The man says, “Exactly. It is what people do that make them good or bad.”
“No. They are just people.”
They are just people.
They are just people.
These men conclude that men and women are completely neutral in the world regarding morality and that their morality is ultimately determined by what their actions say. A man’s actions make him either good or evil. But doesn’t this sound backwards? Shouldn’t our morality determine what we do? Shouldn’t what we do be conceived in our minds before we actually do something? This is the only thing that makes sense.
Thoughts precede actions.
Blueprints precede constructions.
Later on, Archer says in a moment of reflection, Archer says to a journalist, after she continues to pry into his own evil life, trying to help him come to grips that he too is an oppressor even though he may not be directly holding the whip in hand… “I sometimes wonder will God ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other? Then I look around and say, ‘God left this place a long time ago.’ So what’s the point, huh?” He says this in such a regretful tone as his eyes tear up.
I’m listening to this song called The Spoils of the Spoiled right now and the lyric says it all…
“But, it's all in fun and sin until someone calls it in. The cycle comes around again. But, I'm older now, and don't you know, I've figured out the antidote. It overwhelms, engulfed in smoke. It's all we can to cope. Goddamn these idle hands as hindsight can. Our hopes and plans are unfulfilled. It's overwhelming.”
Sounds pretty honest.
Did God leave because we are evil or is it the fact that we are so evil that we think God left? I bank on the latter.
Even looking at the conversations that Archer has, he believes that:
1. That actions determine one’s moral condition.
2. That God is absent because our actions are evil.
This is what depravity looks like as it comes to fruition. Besides, his whole life as a diamond smuggler, Archer obsessed with greed and this tells us that he is dead to God, not that God is absent.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Women.
Feminists today are claiming that they are being and have been oppressed throughout the centuries. And for the most part, they have been. They have been exploited and neglected. If we simply look at historical archives and see how often women are mentioned, we are grossly offended at the neglect of even their names.
Today the war has been pressed against Christianity. That is to say that Christians have been accused of being intolerant of women and oppressive. Notice this quote from www.rwor.org:
“…it is an undeniable fact that the Christian Bible promotes the oppression of women and gay people, and if anyone insists on acting according to a literal reading of the Bible, that person will certainly be joining in "oppress[ing] women and homosexuals."
Before we say things like this against Christianity, have we really considered what MTV, E!, Howard Stern, or any of pop-society has done to women? All over the world we find pornographic literature, websites, and stores that are telling women what they are worth to men. Do you know that the pornography industry generates more money every year than any other business in human history? Did you know that that majority of porn stars are women?
Just look around and see who is really oppressing women. The contemporary marketplace that tells them they have to be a certain height, certain weight, and do certain things with their bodies in order to be considered “valuable.”
This is oppression.
A teenage girl is somewhere in your town right now making herself vomit whatever she just ate in order to be even skinnier. Do you know why? Magazine covers, movie stars, and talk shows are all pointing at the few who look a certain way, and miraculously, make the cut…and are saying that the dominant majority should join them in their vain endeavor to be more skinny, more busty, and more wealthy.
This is oppression.
Christianity serves however, to offer liberty to these women. That is to say, Christians value women’s bodies. Christians value the roles of women in society. Christians do not believe that they should be exploited as HBO, Cinnemax, and Showtime exploit them. The Hooters restraunts, Abercrombie ads, Seventeen magazines to name just a few are who should be called out.
I don’t know where you see it, but I personally see it everywhere.
The first witnesses at Jesus’ tomb were women. This is significant because the writers of the Bible were more concerned with truth than they were with promoting a Patriarchal worldview. Jesus had women disciples and followers. Jesus healed women. Jesus spoke to women of other races (which was strongly condemned), even in public. He risked his own reputation for the betterment and respect of women.
It is strange that the very book (the New Testament) is being condemned for the very thing itself condemns. The New Testament tells women to dress modestly, to have upright character, and to engage culture with genuine worth and value. That is to say that these characteristics are not earned in the bedroom or on a magazine cover, but rather, it is given freely by a God of grace who declares women “worthy” and “valuable” as they stand in Him and with Him against those very practices.
Please, tell me, is this really oppression?
Today the war has been pressed against Christianity. That is to say that Christians have been accused of being intolerant of women and oppressive. Notice this quote from www.rwor.org:
“…it is an undeniable fact that the Christian Bible promotes the oppression of women and gay people, and if anyone insists on acting according to a literal reading of the Bible, that person will certainly be joining in "oppress[ing] women and homosexuals."
Before we say things like this against Christianity, have we really considered what MTV, E!, Howard Stern, or any of pop-society has done to women? All over the world we find pornographic literature, websites, and stores that are telling women what they are worth to men. Do you know that the pornography industry generates more money every year than any other business in human history? Did you know that that majority of porn stars are women?
Just look around and see who is really oppressing women. The contemporary marketplace that tells them they have to be a certain height, certain weight, and do certain things with their bodies in order to be considered “valuable.”
This is oppression.
A teenage girl is somewhere in your town right now making herself vomit whatever she just ate in order to be even skinnier. Do you know why? Magazine covers, movie stars, and talk shows are all pointing at the few who look a certain way, and miraculously, make the cut…and are saying that the dominant majority should join them in their vain endeavor to be more skinny, more busty, and more wealthy.
This is oppression.
Christianity serves however, to offer liberty to these women. That is to say, Christians value women’s bodies. Christians value the roles of women in society. Christians do not believe that they should be exploited as HBO, Cinnemax, and Showtime exploit them. The Hooters restraunts, Abercrombie ads, Seventeen magazines to name just a few are who should be called out.
I don’t know where you see it, but I personally see it everywhere.
The first witnesses at Jesus’ tomb were women. This is significant because the writers of the Bible were more concerned with truth than they were with promoting a Patriarchal worldview. Jesus had women disciples and followers. Jesus healed women. Jesus spoke to women of other races (which was strongly condemned), even in public. He risked his own reputation for the betterment and respect of women.
It is strange that the very book (the New Testament) is being condemned for the very thing itself condemns. The New Testament tells women to dress modestly, to have upright character, and to engage culture with genuine worth and value. That is to say that these characteristics are not earned in the bedroom or on a magazine cover, but rather, it is given freely by a God of grace who declares women “worthy” and “valuable” as they stand in Him and with Him against those very practices.
Please, tell me, is this really oppression?
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
DESAPARECIDOS
...And it's like I'm under water
or on an endless escalator
I just go up and up
but I don't ever reach the top
And it reads just like the bible
twenty centuries of scandal,
yeah, it all depends on how you interpret it
The word is love
The word is loss
The words are damaged goods that's what I am
A lifetime gets chalked up to an experience...
These are some lyrics to a song I was listening to this morning on a jog. In preparation to go to the London School of Theology, I am studying many books regarding Hermeneutics (the science of interpreting literature) and so I am constantly hearing "buzz" words like "word," "interpretation," "meaning," and "experience."
To never attain an end (an endless escalator) is what many Americans are bound to thinking and living like today. We simply wake up, go to work, listen to the same songs, and celebrate the same things (music, art, sports, entertainment) week in and week out.
Stout, Rorty, and Fish, are all so pragmatic in their thinking. They believe that texts are to be used for their own purposes, not in discovering a 'true' nature (texts don't have one.) Meaning is not contained in a text like a person contained in an elevator; rather meaning is found in whatever it is that gets us to be interested. Interested in what lies beyond the cover that tells us we need to find out what is inside on the pages.
Does this make sense?
Our intrests are the meanings.
Therefore, because of all of our 1/2 loves we continue to go "up and up and never reach the top." We cannot bridle our passions outside of Christ and find genuine meaning. If I am responsible for creating meaning for myself and there is no objective, I may as well accuse anything that claims to be objective (as the Bible does) as being "scandalous."
Oh wait, nevermind. It "all depends on how you interpret it."
or on an endless escalator
I just go up and up
but I don't ever reach the top
And it reads just like the bible
twenty centuries of scandal,
yeah, it all depends on how you interpret it
The word is love
The word is loss
The words are damaged goods that's what I am
A lifetime gets chalked up to an experience...
These are some lyrics to a song I was listening to this morning on a jog. In preparation to go to the London School of Theology, I am studying many books regarding Hermeneutics (the science of interpreting literature) and so I am constantly hearing "buzz" words like "word," "interpretation," "meaning," and "experience."
To never attain an end (an endless escalator) is what many Americans are bound to thinking and living like today. We simply wake up, go to work, listen to the same songs, and celebrate the same things (music, art, sports, entertainment) week in and week out.
Stout, Rorty, and Fish, are all so pragmatic in their thinking. They believe that texts are to be used for their own purposes, not in discovering a 'true' nature (texts don't have one.) Meaning is not contained in a text like a person contained in an elevator; rather meaning is found in whatever it is that gets us to be interested. Interested in what lies beyond the cover that tells us we need to find out what is inside on the pages.
Does this make sense?
Our intrests are the meanings.
Therefore, because of all of our 1/2 loves we continue to go "up and up and never reach the top." We cannot bridle our passions outside of Christ and find genuine meaning. If I am responsible for creating meaning for myself and there is no objective, I may as well accuse anything that claims to be objective (as the Bible does) as being "scandalous."
Oh wait, nevermind. It "all depends on how you interpret it."
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Time and how I didn't create today.
Something I’ve been thinking about the past couple of days is the concept and reality of time. How time is something that I can and cannot quite understand. I’ve been here now for nearly twenty-seven years. They have gone so quickly. Anyways…back to time.
Right now, the moment that I’m experiencing, sitting here in the library is leaving. This moment, the only moment that I’ve taken a second to acknowledge today is heading off. It’s heading off into a place we like (or don’t like) to call the “past.” The past is simply a collection of present moments that have ceased to exist because other moments came in and replaced them. (Have you ever felt “replaced?”) At least physically speaking. That is, sometimes our minds don’t allow us to move beyond these moments in the past, so we keep them with us right now, in the present, and hope to take them with us into the future…
About these newer moments that are bound and determined to move in. We call them the “future.” Just like all of the Londoners who are boarding the tube right now, to go to another destination, so are these moments. They are these little increments that are sailing off. What is so strange about the past moments or the future moments is that they are both unchangeable. I cannot go back to where I was one minute ago (at 2.36 pm) in this library and start over. I can’t get into the future, even two hours from now, when I hope to be on the soccer field. Neither of these periods can be changed.
So the past is a collection of present moments that have been invaded by the future moments. How strange.
In the present I can think of the past. Some of these moments I love to remember. Other moments, I wish they never happened. Conversations. Places. Experiences. Thoughts. Expressions. Some have been amazing and others, quite horrible. And this is not only me, but everyone in the world who is capable of using their memory has the very same experience. Not that they experienced the world in the way that I did, but they did experience the world and therefore some of their experiences merit the very same characteristics in which I merited as well (happy, sad, exciting, grateful, etc.).
So, what will I do with the present? It is about to slip away into this sealed vault that has no code that I may try to unlock. I cannot get this moment back. So, how do I use this moment to ascribe glory to someone greater than myself? I must ascribe glory to someone greater than myself because I couldn’t “create” this moment. I just happened to come into it. Since I am in it, I am grateful. I can honestly say that I am not responsible for making what I call “today.” I am just here. Therefore, somebody deserves a “thank you very much, kind sir. Without your good work, I wouldn’t have a ‘today.’”
Therefore, since I can’t create time or redeem time, I must be absorbed into the one who does. For he can make the most of “my time.”
Right now, the moment that I’m experiencing, sitting here in the library is leaving. This moment, the only moment that I’ve taken a second to acknowledge today is heading off. It’s heading off into a place we like (or don’t like) to call the “past.” The past is simply a collection of present moments that have ceased to exist because other moments came in and replaced them. (Have you ever felt “replaced?”) At least physically speaking. That is, sometimes our minds don’t allow us to move beyond these moments in the past, so we keep them with us right now, in the present, and hope to take them with us into the future…
About these newer moments that are bound and determined to move in. We call them the “future.” Just like all of the Londoners who are boarding the tube right now, to go to another destination, so are these moments. They are these little increments that are sailing off. What is so strange about the past moments or the future moments is that they are both unchangeable. I cannot go back to where I was one minute ago (at 2.36 pm) in this library and start over. I can’t get into the future, even two hours from now, when I hope to be on the soccer field. Neither of these periods can be changed.
So the past is a collection of present moments that have been invaded by the future moments. How strange.
In the present I can think of the past. Some of these moments I love to remember. Other moments, I wish they never happened. Conversations. Places. Experiences. Thoughts. Expressions. Some have been amazing and others, quite horrible. And this is not only me, but everyone in the world who is capable of using their memory has the very same experience. Not that they experienced the world in the way that I did, but they did experience the world and therefore some of their experiences merit the very same characteristics in which I merited as well (happy, sad, exciting, grateful, etc.).
So, what will I do with the present? It is about to slip away into this sealed vault that has no code that I may try to unlock. I cannot get this moment back. So, how do I use this moment to ascribe glory to someone greater than myself? I must ascribe glory to someone greater than myself because I couldn’t “create” this moment. I just happened to come into it. Since I am in it, I am grateful. I can honestly say that I am not responsible for making what I call “today.” I am just here. Therefore, somebody deserves a “thank you very much, kind sir. Without your good work, I wouldn’t have a ‘today.’”
Therefore, since I can’t create time or redeem time, I must be absorbed into the one who does. For he can make the most of “my time.”
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Meaning...
(These thoughts came from reading the first chapter of Vanhoozer’s Book “Is there a meaning in this text?”)
In a world in which authorship is undone and all of nature (not creation) is here by sheer accident, whom do we praise? Since by default, the answer is “no one,” we must then place ourselves on the throne and ascribe glory to our great names.
Yet, we can’t thank ourselves for the earth. We can only carpool and recycle. We can’t thank ourselves for creating ourselves. We can only eat healthy and exercise. None of us willed ourselves into existence. All we can do is simply agree with Descartes and say ever so hastily, “I think, therefore I am.”
If there is no author, no originator and meaning is simply denied or declared as useless, the question must be asked, “Why would I need to have any form of relationship with anyone?” After all, everyone is simply here by happenstance. Just like me, their existence is just as pointless as my own.
Ah, nevertheless, we could agree with Nietzche or Anthony Fish and state ever so cleverly, “The reader now creates meaning.” The author is obsolete. Forgotten. And when he is mentioned, he is the butt of a joke. He is merely annoying.
An atheist can not look into the heavens and be in awe of anyone. He must simply stare into the great “accident.” Why is it that I do not care to go to Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon with an atheist? Because nothing inside of them can celebrate a Creator. In fact, why should an atheist find pleasure in anything? Again, there is no one to thank for giving the pleasing circumstance.
Certainly, I can not say alongside Richard Dawkins, author of the God dilusion “I create my own purpose.” For, as a Christian, I believe an author and his or her intention is what preceeds a text. I believe that a painter must pick up the brush before a critic can have something to write about, and I believe a creator must exist in order for creation to exist. Some would say Aquinas was “on to something...”
In a world in which authorship is undone and all of nature (not creation) is here by sheer accident, whom do we praise? Since by default, the answer is “no one,” we must then place ourselves on the throne and ascribe glory to our great names.
Yet, we can’t thank ourselves for the earth. We can only carpool and recycle. We can’t thank ourselves for creating ourselves. We can only eat healthy and exercise. None of us willed ourselves into existence. All we can do is simply agree with Descartes and say ever so hastily, “I think, therefore I am.”
If there is no author, no originator and meaning is simply denied or declared as useless, the question must be asked, “Why would I need to have any form of relationship with anyone?” After all, everyone is simply here by happenstance. Just like me, their existence is just as pointless as my own.
Ah, nevertheless, we could agree with Nietzche or Anthony Fish and state ever so cleverly, “The reader now creates meaning.” The author is obsolete. Forgotten. And when he is mentioned, he is the butt of a joke. He is merely annoying.
An atheist can not look into the heavens and be in awe of anyone. He must simply stare into the great “accident.” Why is it that I do not care to go to Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon with an atheist? Because nothing inside of them can celebrate a Creator. In fact, why should an atheist find pleasure in anything? Again, there is no one to thank for giving the pleasing circumstance.
Certainly, I can not say alongside Richard Dawkins, author of the God dilusion “I create my own purpose.” For, as a Christian, I believe an author and his or her intention is what preceeds a text. I believe that a painter must pick up the brush before a critic can have something to write about, and I believe a creator must exist in order for creation to exist. Some would say Aquinas was “on to something...”
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