Fighting for Joy

What have we become?

2007-02-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

While I was at L’abri last semester I really got to see in theory and in practice the real depth at which sin has affected every aspect of our humanity. Every relationship between man, God, and nature have been severed and in need of redemption. It is under this guise that Bloom seems to shatter all ungrounded humanism in describing some aspects of the relationships that his students deal with. He has couched his premises interestingly enough under Self-Centeredness, Equality, Race, Sex, Separateness, Divorce, Love, and Eros.

In beginning with Self-centeredness he really looks first at the unparalleled freedom that our generation has experienced. Not the nuclear scares of the sixties, or drafted in Vietnam mostly ease. Even in light of 9/11 I imagine these truths are still prevalent. And building on what he has already played up in the errors of cultural relativism he thinks we have been free but have been given no real alternative to looking inward. Again there is no desire for what is noble, true, good, etc we merely feel that survival (living longer, beating cancer, everything on the discovery channel,) is now the only virtue for us to admire. He brilliantly adds that “the petty personal interests of youth- “making it”, finding a place for oneself- persevere through life” and these are the only things standing in the gap (between infinity and the individual) where country, religion, family, ideas of civilization, etc once lived. So the diagnosis is a severe case of narcissism unparalleled in history.

So the effects of this narcissism:
1) It is not so much of an effect but a parallel endemic of the decline of the family that have fed each others downward plunge. There isn’t much respect for the roles of parents and as we all know America/the West feels no obligation to our elderly apart from shoving them into a nursing home to waste away clearing our consciences.
2) Any sense of “rootedness” has now officially been severed since we exist primarily as individuals. Surely the massive frequency with which we move cannot help.

“They can be anything they want to be, but they have no particular reason to want to be anything in particular. Not only are they free to decide their place, but they are also free to decide their place, but are also free to decide whether they will believe in God or be atheists, or leave their options open by being agnostic; whether they will be straight or gay, or, again, keep their options open; whether they will marry and whether they will stay married; whether they will have children- and so on endlessly. There is no necessity, no morality, no social pressure, no sacrifice to be made that miliates going in or turning away from any of these directions, and there are desires pointing to each, with mutually contradictiory arguments to buttress them. “

No wonder Camus’ the Stranger and Jack Kerouac (beat poets) contiune to be enshrined by our generation.

Socrates Plato and Jackass?

2007-01-16T15:05:00.001-08:00

Bloom breaks down his book into primary three sections the first being about his individual experience with students in his classes. Then he moves to american social commentary which he calls "Nihilism: American Style", and he then sums up with a large-scale evaluation of the universities as whole institutions. They all have great sub-chapters with headings like

~"The Nietzscheanization of the Left or Vice Versa"
~"Rousseau's Radicalization and the German University"
~"The Decomposition of the University"

I have only made it through about half-way of the first part mostly due to the material being incredibly dense. So here goes...

He begins by comparing the run of the mill European university attending student with his/her american counterpart. He felt though the European students came steeped in the classics (Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, Kant, etc) it was equally as abstract as the formalized Lord's Prayer that used to be recited mechanically in American schools. So in some ways American students were open to the Classics and felt there was something to learn from them up until the 60's. He felt when the Russians beat us into space amidst some other cultural pressures students began to be thrown into specialization-specific "disciplines" namely physics and mathematics. Necessity and ego prevailed and we were left with an intense spiritual vacuum devoid of any substantial moral component. He states that we were "capable of calculating but not of any passionate insight leaving the soul itself flaccid"

He then re-enters the euro-american comparison with a conversation about our lack of a collective "American" spirit any more. Still today wrapped up in the languages themselves of other countries are certain world-views or dispositions to worldviews. In France people are divided between Descartes-Psacal (reason and revelation) and you can get classified as one or the other if you visit there today. Similarly in Germany you have Goethe, Italy w/ Dante and Machiavelli. The only thing we had going for us, which speaks incredibly profoundly against those European thinkers, was a thourough understanding of the Scriptures and the Constitution in that order. Those were documents that interpreted Reality for us and the liveable Rights/Wrongs that they espoused. No one ever questioned whether freedom, equality, or justice were right or wrong they merely argued about their implications. However when the revisionst history and historicism began to re-write reality and debunk the Founding Fathers while throwing out anything sacred we have lost any sense of national/social consciousness we ever had. This is what seems to drive Bloom most crazy about the state of the students that come in as products of this brand of "absolute liberalism".

So he concludes:
"Thus openness has driven out the local deities, leaving only the speechless, meaningless country. There is no immediate, sensual experience of the nation's meaning or its project, which would provide the basis for adult reflection on regimes and statesmanship. Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political hertiage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it"

When he deals with what i see to be even a grosser shortcoming (the loss of anything Sacred) he really hangs the blame on the family. The fundamental element of any democracy. Most of the How and Why questions in life were answered through individuals living lives grounded in the Scriptures. Something transcendental. There was no "abstract teaching" that was divorced from reality. Now however we teach "Ethics" for a grade in a university and the aim is to perform well in the classroom while not believing that there is any accountability in the real world for what you might potentially learn in the classroom outside of some loose scratch my back ill scratch yours. This is really a subtle insubstantial form of propaganda that somehow is now on the shoulders of schools and governments. He says families inability to translate any meaningful purpose to the next generation is one of the sharpest daggers currently in the American mind. Most of parents advice these days, save those amazing exceptions, can be summed up as "be happy"/"make money"/"be civil" which can be interpreted in any way you would like.

It seems to come back to the temptation birthed in the 60's to value the present, be snobbish about the past, have a blind acceptance in progress and teach our children to do likewise. It doesn't even have to correlate with Reality!!! We have zero appreciation for the books of ole that they might be able to teach us something important about how things really are. Check this..

"Instead of being overwhelmed by Cyrus, Theseus, Moses, Romulus (or the Transcendental personal Triune Creator God), they [students] unconciously act out the roles of the doctors, lawyers, businessmen, or TV personalities around them. One can only pity young people without admirations they can respect or avow, who are restrained from the enthusiasm for great virtue" (I added the bit about Triune Personal God bc i dont think Bloom goes far enough).

So ultimately we end up with what i watched last night : Jackass 2. We are entertained now in the present with no ability to critique the past. As Neil Postman states in his book "Americans are probably the best entertained and least informed people on the planet". I will leave you with a quote of Bloom's when talking about the Bible.

"I do not believe that my generation, my cousins who have been educated in the American Way, all of whom are M.d's or P.H.D's, have any comparable learning. When they talk about heaven and earth, the relations between men and women, parents and children, the human condition, I hear nothing but cliches, superficialities, the material of Satire...I mean rather that a life based on the Book is closer to the truth, that it provides the material for deeper research in and access to the real nature of things. Without the general revelations, epics and philosophies as part of our natural vision, there is nothing to see out there and eventually little left inside. "

Intro - E Pluribus Unum

2007-01-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

Intro - E Pluiribus Unum (Out of many--One)

In the opening portion of his book professor Allan Bloom relays much of his frustration as a teacher first and then tries his hand at dissecting how we have gotten ourselves into this mess. What strikes me is that this book was written in the late 80's and cuts deeper and more painfully than most modern critiques.

Much of the American Experiment and a modern day education is grounded in the idea of E Pluribus Unum. Which can be roughly translated as getting unity out of diversity. The Greeks thought there was an essence which summed up all the other four main essences, a quintessence (where we get our modern word).

Bloom laughs at that groundless idealism now as he states that every university student comes dogmatically assured that all truth is relative and that this knowledge is the only modern virtue (it carries a moral tone in its unequivocality).He prescribes two differing types of "openness" you could even substitute "unity out of diversity" and these serve as really the theme and basis for his work. I will try to expound on these and then hopefully get to his historical critique of how we ended up here.

Type #1- A hollow type of cultural relativism which explicitly denies the content of the information itself but stresses only a diversification of information for the sake of itself. There is no talk of fundamental principles, virtue. etc only a blind trust in progressivism (an accommodation to the present) and "toleration" clothed with apathy about our souls. It stifles our potential as knowers because the things worth knowing are all of equal value since everything is relative.

"Thus what is advertised as a great opening is actually a great closing. No longer is there a hope that there are great wise men in other places and times who can reveal truth about life-- except for the few remaining young people who look for a quick fix from a guru" (p.34)

Type #2- An openness that invites us to the quest for knowledge and certitude, for which history and the various cultures provide a brilliant array of examples for examination. It believes there is a knowable good that exists outside of the self and acknowledges error is possible (instead of stifling potential error like Type #1) but the reward is worth the risk of failing or being perceived as "intolerant"

How we got ourselves into this lovely predicament: Bloom spends much of his time here laying out how he thinks some major shifts have led us here. He starts with our founding Fathers and the type of men that were assumed and produced during that time period. He states

"We began with the model of rational and industrious man, who was honest, respected thee laws, and was dedicated to his family. Above all he was to know the rights doctrine; The Constitution, which embodied it; and American history which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" (p.27)

So starting with a beautiful blend of Reason and Pragmatism America was birthed and while I think Bloom might be a bit historically optimistic about the state of our citizens i think our ancestors had a much clearer understanding of what he calls "natural" reality. But as a major influx of immigrants and ensuing pluralism came ashore we swung the pendulum from protecting the natural rights of human American citizens to protect practically everyone and everything. Bloom states rather interestingly that the Founders were scared of minorities because they were selfish and sought their interests above the whole of the public good (more like factions), so they instituted a system that would keep them in check rather than ensuring that they had a fair amount of power. Think about it even as I use the words majority and minority we have been so conditioned to think that the worst of all possible evils is to not allow any one's rights to be trampled on. It seems that the Founders would trample on some toes if only to allow the majority to have rights and then institute a system where they could not overturn those rights.

3 Big Places We see the Change
1) Civil War- Bloom claims that the South actually needs to point the finger at itself for devaluing the Constitution and being the first majority of citizens that felt their needs and way of life over-rided the moral livable demands laid out in the Constitution (barring the 3/5ths Compromise the heart of the Const. is that ALL men should have been equal).

2) 60's Sexual Revolution - every type of authority is viewed as a chain needing to be loosed so we turned to the go to the bazaar of cultures and find reinforcement for inclinations that are repressed by puritanical guilt feelings. That's what we were told and we bought it hook line and sinker. Sick.

3) Civil Rights Movement - Here we see the peak of this divide. One one side you have some using the Dec of Ind and Const. to justify their natural rights and others like the Black Panthers saying that inherently they (Const. and Dec of Ind) were set up to keep some subjugated into slavery. Humanness is no longer enough they wanted literally "black power". We are now utterly confused as to what our natural rights are, whether they are derived or given. It's chaos.

Now that is a lot of information and I'm trying my best to synthesize it in a digestible form but i think he has some formidable conclusions in this intro. Where the line between what he thinks and my critique is no longer solid.

1) We now have a shift from principle to the pragmatic. We have had to debunk the past in order to put trust in the future. We serve a brand of liberalism w/o natural rights. And hence we have shifted from content study to diversification of information. We are left with a hollow cultural relativism that tells students their preferences are only an accident of time and location (the new openness Type 1)

2) I think this most appropriately could be called the era of cowardice and laziness. I believe we have a "tolerance" or "indiscriminate attitude" that has been told no such things as the Good exists, so don't waste time pursuing the True, the Real, the Transcendental because everyone is right. Even the bloke who doesn't believe in any of those. I think our Founders would laugh at what we call "tolerance"

I will end with this: Bloom states that even though Catholics and Protestants have had a rough storied history at least they took their beliefs seriously. There was no lax waning apathy about the state of their souls. May we take all of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True deadly seriously. It seems the only place to ground Unity and Diversity is in the Triune God not other cultures and not other gods.

Inspiration comes in Many Forms

2007-01-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

Well it has been months since my last post but much has transpired since then and i figure its time to start blogging again before the Information Highway leaves me out to dry in some obscure rest area metaphorically around Lubbock.

I am going to be changing some things around and i am going to be doing a review of a book i just bought at goodwill for 2 bucks called the Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. One of the most fascinating aspects of being outside of our culture (particularly in the UK) is the room allowed to diagnose the current state of our own American Culture in all its supposed grandeur.

It is in that process of discovery that i have found gaping holes in what we tend to call "education" today so i hope to process some of these thoughts in the Context particularly of what Christ calls us to. I will use Os Guinness' Fit Bodies Fat Minds and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death as secondary sources but most of the work will come from Bloom's book.

May we never stop fighting for all the fullness that Christ has for us in this life and beyond,

Breaking Suspended Adolescence

2006-08-10T23:58:00.000-07:00

Later this afternoon i will trek off to one of the last great wilderness(es?) known as the Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. I have gone ahead and taken the liberty as labeling this as my official rite of passage into the rest of my life.

Here in the West we are so freaking lame. I am a liberal arts major so if there has ever needed to be evidenced that i haven't passed any rites you can look no further than that. I am not really expected to know or prove anything. In fact much the opposite i am told that i have sufficient enough credentials to brave any circumstance that mighgt come my way. Like a bear. I never learned bear-defense or fighting off bears with ju-jitsu in school. Which will have certainly come in handy in a couple days...

All this is to say i will be free from non-blogging for a couple more weeks and then a short stay before i take off for London. Hopefully i will be able to throw some pictures up here of me throwing a trout into a bears mouth 6 ft away, or something like that. It could be like one of those inspirational posters you see in your middle school coaches office that says "Attitude: The only thing that counts" with some lame picture of a rowing team at dawn or some crap.

Give me a trout in a bears mouth to teach me abouts some attitude. See you guys soon..

Technical Difficulties

2006-08-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

Kids i have been having some issues getting the posts up i promise it isnt because life has gotten uninteresting....so hold tight and pretend AstroWorld is still open despite its ghettoness

Privacy Please

2006-05-27T16:16:00.000-07:00

I am figuring out that a fundamental woe of the american lifestyle, (as evidenced in my own life), is a demand of privacy at all and any cost. We are unsettled by phone-tapping, the patriot act, etc bc it gets to the core of what we demand as americans : privacy.

Think about it.. we even have gone so far as to demand, even on something as etheral as the internet, a section cut out called MY space (.com). This Space is supposed to be so distinct and seperate as to encapsulate everything that is different and unique about me relative to you.

I think this perceive right that we will defend at all cost is at the very least contrary to the efforts of the gospel to bring us to a place of transparency in every corner of our lives. One of my favorite quotes, is from a great dutch theologian named Abraham Kuyper..."There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!"

This is all relevant to me because having a new roomate this summer he has the type of personality that desires to know where i am and where i am going at all times of the day. Now he isn't OCD about it but he simply desires the truth. And there are times, more often than not, that i want to tell him anything but. It brushes up against me to have someone know that much about me, to know my whereabouts and be accountable to them at all times. He/she might really find out how i dont't honor God with all my time, and then rightly call me into question.

I'm not arguing for some systematic time-sheet that God keeps us to but i wonder if some of the arguments behind this right (who came up with this as a right anyways) are just masks of pretension?

Eric Fromm meets Jesus

2006-05-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

As a discouraged psychology major about to graduate i feel it is my duty to dispel terrible untruths that reign supreme in modern psychology meanwhile affirming the things and processes that are true and accurate. Let me introduce you to Eric Fromm, a German/American who was a humanist but made leaps and bounds in the development of humanist psychology and human nature.

He was widely studied in Hebrew literature but had a tough time wrestling with this notion that evil lies deeply engrained in the human heart and is the default function apart from the regenerative work of the holy spirit. That being said he has something interesting to say regarding the nature of choice. This is not a commentary on a type of absolut free will simply the day-to-day nature of choosing Christ or the world. Interesting stuff from a humanist.....

"Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make right decisions, the more our heart softens-or perhaps better, comes alive. Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacityto choose the desireable alternative, until eventually it becomes more diffficult for me to choose the undesireable rather than the desireable action. On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost......

Most people fail in the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot lead a better life; they fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide."

Amazingly profound insight into possibly how sin affects our decisions to choose righteousness continually.

God seemed to set the freedom before the people of Israel in the desert in Deuteronomy 11:27-28

"See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse:

the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am commanding you today;

and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today, by following other gods which you have not known. "

Still Alive and Flailing

2006-05-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay guys but as work increases everything else seems to decrease. Which actually is i think going to be the theme of this piece. I am sure there have been many other trail-blazing-graduating-seniors-who-also-regret-a-liberal-arts-degree who have complained about this strange phase of entering into a "workforce" so hopefully im not just regurgitating whats already been said.

But this perspective i think needs to be explored a bit more. Adam screwed up and God's punishment to him was not only a spiritual death in loss of fellowship with infinite God, or promised physical death at some undisclosed point in the future, but on top of that a toiling the soil just to get by and suffice living. (Ladies got the blessing of pain in childbirth so i say lets call it even and move on)

But the latter punishment doesn't trump the first one, in fact it might make the first punishment that much worse. Not being able to find the same type of satisfaction in his work as he found in walking with God must have been the most frustrating thing for Adam to do. I imagine regret was something Adam was very fond of.

But how this plays into my own situation seems a bit different but altogether somewhat similar. God has ordained that we work in order to make ends me period. Even trust fund babies like Billy Madison have to had someone work at some point in time to cover their leisurely lifestyle. I can go into this dreaded reality knowing it won't provide me the same satisfaction that a dynamic infinite bride-bridegroom relationship can, but that still doesn't answer the question what should i do with my time?

In some sense anything i do that isn't sin is permissible. But i dont want my life to just be "permissible". If you guys haven't seen the Invisible Children documentary i insist you stop reading this and check it out at invisiblechildren.com. What i love about this film is that college-students not middle-aged crises corvette driving men, or desperate housewives but college kids who got a degree in something meaningless like me went on a trip to find substantial rich 2 scoops full of meaning. They came back with a terrible story of genocide, abduction, and child molestation but ITS REALITY. It's not country-club pretension, or mcdonalds, its real sufffering and real needs being met.

Dare i say there can and needs to be a natural flow between the substantial meaning i find fundamentally in Christ and the way it makes itself out into my own occupation? Should i get stoned for saying that?

(Open to Career Suggestions like a fat kid is open to the possibility that he is just big boned..no really give me a job)

Intentionality vs. Spirit

2006-04-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

The word "intentional" gets thrown around in Christian circles more than "post-modern" in the secular world. However it seems by very nature to be in opposition to what many call "living by the Spirit". Both terms are rather ambiguous but still are at the heartbeat of what it means to be a Jesus follower. I am intentional about writing in this blog, there is purpose and causality in it. The same should be true about walking by the spirit but often times there isn't

Let me see if i can explain this better. Many people i would lob into a more reformed orthodoxy pursue intentionality. That is when they are in the world they are purposeful in bringing up Christ in conversation, sharing his truth, praying without ceasing, studying God's word, etc. But by saying being intentional about it often times it carries this sense of friction that we must wil-powerfully overcome if we are going to live the kind of life Jesus beckons us to. So this tension between old and new man is only overcome by tighting my bootstraps, gritting my teeth, and forcing everything about my christian walk.

On the other hand you have many more charismatically oriented individuals who pray much more for the direction and guidance of the holy spirit waiting for days and months at a time for God to speak, paint, smokescreen, a picture or direction for their life. They pray for oppurtunities to share as the Holy Spirit orchestrates their days. Now certainly i am oversimpllyifying this a bit but is it really necessary to pray for oppurtunities? Is not every single person i run into everyday in class, spider-house, home, etc a individual created by God to enjoy him. Why should i ask God to deliver some and not all? Now you could go overboard with that and try a save the word brand of Christianity which does no one any good but my problem is with the distinction.

Has God given me a mind and the tools to go forward trusting Him? Or has he made me a somewhat passive receptacle needing to be told when and where to go, how to speak, etc. My calvinism tells me God is behind this whole process but finding my niche and form is the hardest part. I really was much more certain at the begining of this blog but now im not sure where the middle ground is...any thoughts? Does anyone read this.....?

B-love

Samson...ite

2006-03-13T21:14:00.000-08:00

In case yall Didn't hear like Samson i had my locks cut and henceforth all power drained from my being....

Sans Locks:

Before:

What's your birth Certificate Say?

2006-03-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

There are many things that i unbeknowingly accepted as a part of my identity strictly from my parents. My large snoz, dark hair, affinity for the Spanish and the like. However one of the hardest things to realize is that when i became an adopted Child of God i got a new birth certificate. Just like in real life when a child is adopted they recieve a new "identity" of sorts in the family they are now a part of. Unlike the natural picking up though of the habits, joys, loves of that family we as believers must fight with everything we have just to hold onto the true identity of myself.

Can i look back at God's certificate on my life and accept myself as beloved....always? That's who i am and who you are. Straight up. I am not the sum total of my good + bad behavior. I am not who i say/think i am. I am not made up completely of what others think/percieve me to be. I am one thing...beloved

Giving up on Painless Life/All Dead White Boys say God is Good

2006-03-06T23:38:00.000-08:00

Bonhoeffer, one of the most famous theologians of our time, has been immortalized for his phrase concerning costly grace..."when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die". I don't know why but the first time i read that and even when i approach the gospels i have a very almost romantic notion of flesh-dying-and-spiritual-seed-planting in that hole. From root canals to lodged bullets things that poison us must be pulled out no matter the cost. Why should i think that any sin hanging out in my body should be any different? If anything the nature of sin should contort and disfigure my soul if i let it impregnate me. Funny that you don't hear many folks (pastor-folk) talking like that.

For as many writhing moments i have had broken in my weakness to defeat the flesh in me i am still content in the greatness of the depth my Saviour went to give me an oppurtunity to fight. This kind of fighting-until-death will be the most painful thing we will ever endure. C.S Lewis, in his Great Divorce uses the illusion of an iguana sitting on your shoulder for indwelling sin and as you try to pull it off it only digs its claws in deeper. Folks in the book give into the pain and accept it as normal so eventually the pain turns them numb.

Pain of sin still tells me i am not numb to it which is a good thing. Numbness scares me. God seems to care least for numb apathetic individuals who won't even feel His heartbeat let alone their own. Physical death seems to be a release from all this but only comes after I have fought, scratched, and lost teeth in the effort to rid my life of this poisonous disease by loving more of Christ.

Imagining our Image

2006-02-28T19:15:00.000-08:00

For some time i have wrestled through issues of truth currently on the docket of modern psychology. We as a culture, i am convinced, are at the peak of self-glutton fest where we have reduced human beings to a wal-mart of sorts where everything necessary to accomplish, achieve, fix, imagine is contained inside just in deep recessed aisles not easily accessed all the time.

Neitzsche in his attempt to create uber-self-reliant individuals used to speak of this type of tyranny ironically enough in his work entitled "Beyond Good and Evil". He speaks of a type of livable morality that has moved beyond archaic rules and rigid legalistic slavery, which keeps us from becoming all that we are intended to be. I am afraid that ole Fredrich has gotten exactly what he wished for.

As long as we can throw off these chains that fundamentally tell us who we are and what we were made for we are then capable of making up our own identity as we go. But then again that assumes even then that i should trust myself to tell me the truth about myself. This is what bothers me so much about the Scriptures. The Unholy Trinity as C.S Lewis called it (Flesh, World, and Self) competes to tell me the "truth" about myself and certainly i believe it oft because i am very gullible. Could this be the very thing that Paul wrestles with in Romans 7-8? When i gave my life to Christ i have a new identity. It is fundamentally different and anything good that then went into me at that moment came only from Christ. Now still i like to sin and confuse my identity with what i use to be but as Paul echoes that is not me, but just the sin that still lingers in me. But before me get all high and mighty lets not then go ahead and take credit for the good deeds that flow from us following. If anything good now comes it is completely Christ and not me.

What does this really mean and look like? I am not convinced but i am tired of listening to the wrong voices. I am tired of tricking myself into thinking i am more holy/ or even sinful than i really am. Who are you fundamentally? How do you know the truth about yourself? Can we trust the progress of Nietzsche to really lead us to a race of men and women who can trust their desires only because at that point they are trustworthy?

Maybe we have ears to hear and eyes to see but are doing neither.

Living is Simple

2006-02-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

The two simplest commandments in Scripture are to Love God and Love Others as much as i love myself. It is these very two things that have been the stumbling block for literally thousands of people as they consider the claims of Jesus. There is nothing so self-less as giving every inch of your being to a God you cannot smell,taste,touch,hear, or see and to people who will continually dissapoint, hurt, frustrate, and turn a deaf ear to your needs

Certainly we are deaf to the tales of unbelieveably selfless individuals who day after day pour themselves out like drink offerings to the communities around them. Puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards one of the most brilliant theologians ever spent the last years of his life as a domestic missionary to some indian tribes in the northeast. Jim Elliott and others viewed it as unthinkable to do anything but ultimately burn up in the service of Christ.

I hate that we think in America somehow we should be living a different form of safer christianity. Like the Scriptures weren't really supposed to ever be read through the lens of a 21st century american. Can we please stop playing games.

The Simple Way

2006-02-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

More oft than not i believe we don't really believe that people can live lives like Jesus details in the Scriptures. I had my paradigm of that thinking rocked this last weekend back in Houston. I go to a lovely church there called Ecclesia (www.ecclesiahouston.org) which is very intentional about being hands and feet of love to a community in Montrose that many churches have completely forgotten about.

They a guest speaker who was from a similar Ecclesia-like experiment church in Philadelphia called the Simple Way. They are loving/being/engaging in life with the homeless and down and out community up there. He told some of the most amazing stories of the power of reckless, God-like love and its ability to triumph so many things/measures which get in the way of change. Lest we forget that Jesus himself was homeless. "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" in Matthew 8:20. As many of you know Austin has just passed some city ordinances similar to the ones this man described from Philadelpiha which prohibit men and women from sleeping, loitering, panhandling, etc on city property.

He told an amazing story of a group of homeless individuals who had gotten together amidst the frustration of trying to find housing there and ending up squatting in an old catholic cathedral in downtown philadelphia. The church was upset and tried to come kick them out for trespassing. Outside the cathedral the men and women inside had erected a banner that said "How can you worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?" Needless to say the church put off the eviction for a while and you then see a whole community rally around these down and out families who have nothing to call their own. The love of Christ appeals to these real life orphans in the form of real-life Christians not escaping to buildings on sundays but entering into the affliction of the men and women around.

James, the half brother of Jesus in his letter to Jerusalem Christians
"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Maybe our paradigms need to change drastically....

Abre Los Ojos

2006-02-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

"Open Your Eyes" is the rough translation of the vanilla sky predecessor. This was a spanish film that has the exact story line of the american verison and as a cherry on top starred penelope cruz as well. What is interesting to me is the concept that there are certain realities that exist in life i will never percieve in life unless i open my eyes.

Let me give you an example... Last night i went to bed relatively early around 11 and spent about 10 hours asleep. I can remember that i had so many unbelieveable adventuresome dreams and experiences i almost have to trick my brain now into thinking they were merely dreams. I wonder why God allowed us to experience dreams as so unbelieveably real as to struggle with differentiating between realities? Why did God even allow us to dream at all? I am more oft than not frustrated when i wake up because my own life doesn't make room for the adventure and excitement that my dreams frequently offer.

Maybe the indictment is upon my own failure to fully accept the adventure of Christ to embrace a rich-young-ruler-live-by-faith-not-security lifestyle. But then again how many individuals do you know that really live that kind of lifestyle. I don't want to resign my optimism yet, but mediocrity and boredom seep in everywhere i look. I must open my eyes to the realities that these are built-in deceptive measures to keep me from the inspiring beauty of Christ. I have to believe that at all costs...

You can't spell penitentiary without p-e-n..

2006-01-29T15:09:00.000-08:00

"Remember those in prison as if you were in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body." - Hebrews13:3

How many times have i glossed over that scripture and assigned myself to a classification of christian that wouldn't really be good at or do something like that. In fact i have often interpreted that verse to "remember those in prison" as almost an existential reflection empathy exercise. We are just supposed to dwell on what it would be like to be in prison and suffer the torment that those individuals go through...

Mack Webb (#00610078) projected release date (4/14/09) serving a 25 year sentence for theft. Ronald Coleman (#01276070) projected release date (11/05/08) serving 7 years for drug trafficking. Chris Sanders (#01061543) 23 years old serving a 12 year sentence for indecency with a child. These are all men you most likely will not meet but none the less exist and breathe the same air you and i do. They can smile and cherish pictures of family like me. They enjoy the fellowship of friends and like to take a load off after a long day of work like me. However they live in Connally State Penitentiary in Kennedy, Texas. This is a maximum security prison, one of only eight in texas, that houses almost 3,000 inmates.

I got to meet these gentlemen and more last weekend at a prison ministry outreach called "Bill Glass's Weekend of Champions". Aside from the particularly cheesy nature of some of this Christian "outreach", i was able to get into the lives of men who were rapists, murderers, thiefs, pedaphiles, and plain ole bad dudes.

We seem to far too easily create this us/them mentality which quickly dissociates us from any of their problems or fears (dare i say need for the gospel). I think Jesus reccomends that we visit those in prison not only to deliver his Saving message of truth, but that we might in humility note that we ourselves are not one step removed from anything these men and women have done. We are all in the same sinking ship in desperate need of a savior.

Your the only Phar-I-See

2006-01-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

So i think i know now what it is like to be a 1st century pseudo-religious-zealot of the type that Jesus had such strong words and compassion for. It wouldn't even surprise me if the joke about Tennesse and girls wasn't started some 2500 years ago deep in the recesses of some horny pharisee. I think the modern day sect of these types of people (i am speaking as one who claims unintential allegiance) look scarily similar to their distant relatives. But maybe not in the way you and i think.

It's true you don't have folks in the church wearing boxes of scripture on their heads and competing for who has the most verses memorized. Instead we have tshirts and bracelets to let the world know that we wear Christ on our body but not in our hearts. But a shirt alone isn't enough to make a modern day pharisee. The unifying concept of ancient and modern pharisee is the degree of fervor with which they strive continually after vanity. The very thing they know doesn't provide or bring life they pursue more passionately than anyone else on the planet. There is some kind of pride at least in our minds that somehow, someway, against all odds our intensity will count for something in the end even if its in err.

The hardest thing a pharisee can do is admit that all his efforts and striving have been completely useless. Worse than useless even, completely pushing him in the opposite direction further than from where he started. But yet this is the very thing God does throughout the scriptures starting with Israel and into the present era. Turn, change your ways, don't just think different be different, follow, be transformed.

Maybe maturity in being a sincere follower of the Lord means quickness to yield to turning away from my own pursuits and acknowleding the better way.

Armchair Poetry is the best kind

2005-11-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

So tell em what you think

3 seconds of darkness

For 3 seconds I wait for numbness set it
It can delay truth as long as you want.
Help yourself to the buffet of destruction.

Only here can let-down and wanton mix for 3 seconds
Only here titan forces pull desire till its frayed from wear
Only here, one, two, three

Volition and fate are both reigned in
How do I pretend to be more than that
For 3 seconds I am not.
I am only the sum of deception plus opportunity

Shouldn’t the well be less tasty in the face of its own barrenness?
Can one look at a grave and desire to jump in?
Can an empty room want mere filler?
Can 3 seconds draw away all of a fixed reality

“Not again”s blur the focus
Willpower breeds more discontent
How do I escape those 3 seconds

How does 3 seconds mimic satisfaction so well
Each bell I come running in true pavlovian fashion
1 second to blink
2 more to retreat

3 seconds or infinity which is longer
my will or your grace which is stronger

Grace Poem

2005-11-13T16:31:00.000-08:00

I wrote this on a very dark night...

Grace

Again I fall
Flat on my face
Wondering how this place
Appears so similar

The feeling of losing it all
Begins to settle on my soul
Darkness through every orifice crawls
Asking only for one more taste

Like Eve ive been deceived by
This king of the air this thieve…
Who adorns flesh
Torn from those who’ve given up before

Still I stand on sand that sinks
Praying my name remains in permenant ink
I hear that my duty is delight
But on this night all that echoes is the might of frustration

I remember the sweet voice of the one who calls
Whom alone has the power to draw the blinds of the soul
Only my sin has deafened his beckon
And my stubbornness feeds his withdrawl

People spotlight me for answers as I
Teem with only more questions…more chances
To fall, stumble, cry, and be humbled

He will come like a thief in the night
To take away this agony this fight.
I long for the fullness of joy I seek so dearly
And pray for the day when I may see it clearly

Christ to you alone my sin I give
Banking on your promise to forgive
I am not perfect not by a longshot
But in you lies the armor to stop this onslought

As the Father loves you so you love me
Daily, fervently, passionately
To drink and taste of that sweet melody
One must cast aside the sin that so easily entangles me

Help, come, purify
Stand, fight, come inside

May I seek to boast only in the cross that can save me
Not in the dross that plagues and belays me

Now to whom glory and honor continually cede
Comfort my soul and be my reprieve.

Why is it so hard to want to be wanted?

2005-11-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

Let me phrase that question differently... Why is it so hard to want to fall into the arms of a love and desire that promises to sustain and satisfy. If i don't feel a desire to leap into a canyon full of promises yet fulfilled what do i do then? If all of my struggles and strivings stem from an inaccurate view of intimacy how do i then lean the right understanding of intimacy?

There is a sharp distinction to be made bewteen trusting God and pleasing God that is for sure. One by willpower tries to earn the approval, smile, delight of a being who is so perfectly containing everyhing beautiful that your attempts are like filthy blood-stained mentsruel rags (See Ezekiel 36:17). The other acknowledges that Christ can't love me more than he already does because i have been washed in the blood of his sacrifice. I can do nothing to escape that fact even if by willpower ignore/deny every day. Trusting God for what he already says about me and what he says to me IS the battle. Uncovering the truth about who i am already is harder a mystery than interpreting whether light exists in waves or particles.

If what the Scriptures are true, that God is a jealous lover of me, even after the fall, why is it so hard to realize that truth. I certainly don't have to be qualified before he chases after me, bc there is nothing i can do beforehand to qualify myself. But certainly the same must hold true for after the fact as well. How do i walk into the Truth that God is head-over heels in love with me? shouldn't that reality change me to long, worship, desire, return the love shown to me. I know love because he FIRST loved me. This vaccuum of neither returning love nor feeling qualified is driving me crazy.

I want to feel and know the reality that scripture claims that Christ is a jealous lover of me who pursued me unto death, but when it doesn't feel that way how do i act? What if i have never felt that, does that make it any less true? Shouldn't truth be truth because it is somehow applicable to our lives. My musings need direction....

Capitialismized Christianity

2005-08-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

Man it has been entirely longer than i imagined in returning to this lil post but hopefully the lessons i think i have learned will be worth it. I recently took my first real visit to the non-american portion of the world, a little jewel known as Costa Rica for 6 weeks. Aside from learning incredulous amounts of spanish, more interesting were the stories of many of the people God placed before me. Did you ever play Battle Chess 3-d when you were a kid? One of the things i was always amazed at, was when you would move a piece this giant white hand would pluck the unwilling animated piece and if confronted with an enemy they would battle for the honor and dignity of their respective king. It was strange because on this trip i felt like The Lord, like the big caucasian hand in Battle Chess, delivered people into my life and i was left questioning which side i was playing for! I guess the moral of that is that almost unwillingly i participated in this grand scheme of God challenging me and strengthening me even when i didnt want it. This one girl imparticular sticks out in my memory because our friendship was centered around who i actually was and who she actually was and there wasnt any sense like i needed to be some windexed-shined teeth ideal mr clean christian sweating my brow trying to be perfect so she might she a glimpse of this guy i call Lord. I was real in my doubts, struggles, fears, concerns. loves, and joys. And for what seemed like the first time, an actual real human being responded to that!

However though as i have returned back to this culture of perceived comfort and pervasive apathy i have so easily fallen into that mode of learned sinfulness. What i mean by that (aside from taking a stab at the overall triteness of modern psychology) is that when you arent connected to the heart of the Father, when you dont hear his voice telling you who you really are, how He really feels about you, How at great cost to Himself he purchased you, how he longs and aches to spend time with his people, when you dont actively sit in that you open a backdraft of temptation to sweep through every place in your soul and empty you in a heartbeat. It then seems immeasureably harder to even return back to the place where you can hear but by His charity i am asking to be dragged into his presence that i might now taste and see and delight in This God who earnestly desires intimacy with me.

Men who have Gone before

2005-04-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

Maybe if all i do in this blog is get out of the for truth that has come before to speak, it will be worth it. C.S. Lewis wrote this about his experiences involving his mothers death at a young age, and how it shook him like lightning. His first religious experience came in approach God with respect to the imminent death of his mother.

"I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even without fear. He was, in my mental picture of this miracle, to appear as neither Savior nor as Judge, but merely as a magician; and when He had done what was required of Him I supposed He would simply-well go away. It never crossed my mind that the tremendous contact which I solicited should have any consequences beyond restoring the status quo"

What a concept, namely that 87% of the American christian population, of which i considered myself until i was actually touched by Christ, considers this picture of God. He is some magician, subject to our list of demands, on our timetables.

May the maker of all that is beautiful, just, right, satisfying, and loving entice me with Himself, and may i be subject to his beckon alone.

Design versus Desire

2005-04-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

There's something in this blog that i hope to find about humanity and how i fit into this auditorium of life. As of now conflict is really what dominates a majority of my time. Not like a thief who wrestles with stealing a fine piece of art from the Metropolitan but like a anthropomorphized mirror who wonders whether the reflection is an accurate picture of who i was intended to be. This all sounds a little disjointed but a very enlightened fellow said these words which changes everything...

"It’s (joy/delight) commanded because what is at stake is not just our joy but the glory of God, the honor and reputation of God. If we do not rejoice in God – if God is not our treasure and our delight and our satisfaction, then he his dishonored. His glory is belittled. His reputation is tarnished. Therefore God commands our joy both for our good and for his glory."

Why was it impressed upon me for so long, that the end of man is to kill all that isnt godly in me at the expense of joy? Why did i believe the lie that true joy can be found in freeing onself from what i was designed to do? Why do i still do it after all the Christ has done for me?

I desire that wherever anyone is who reads this in the spectrum of existence would lay down our presumptions of existence, stop fighting what i was created to do, and joyfully chain ourselves to the most delightful thing that has ever existed. Pleasure had its origin in Christ who is the exact imprint of the nature of God.

Struggle because without it there is no accountability that your joy is authentic and lasting.
-One who is in the fight