A Useful Reference
I've been far too busy lately trying to establish my ground and not enough time using that ground to do my work. If a farmer waits too long to plant his seed, he may miss an entire season. So here I am.
I've been trying to figure out how to put a blogroll on this thing, but I think I have to go outside of blogger to do it. I don't feel confident enough to mess with that just yet, so I've decided to make a post listing as many of the blogs that I read as I can remember. I'll make that a separate entry so that it can stand alone and not have all this intro junk on it.
For now, I'd like to pass on some interesting info that I came across the other day. It happened on the way to trying to find a definition for "onanism" because I'm working on a big thing about The Matrix that I'd like to open up to the world eventually. Yeah, I had to look up that word. I had no clue. I heard Ghost say it in the computer game clip section on the Ultimate dvd collection thing that I got. I thought it was some mystery religion. Maybe it is in a way... I'm a dork. So, while I was figuring out how to spell it correctly (how humiliating), I stumbled upon this link:
The Skeptics Annotated Bible
It fascinated me how much effort (and bandwidth) these people were putting into denying the validity of the Bible. But that aside, I made note of the list of issues on the right side of the page which they deemed important enough to give icons to and categorize their objections under. This list is very informative.
Before anyone goes off half-cocked and says that's the list we need to root out their weaknesses and debate them on... lets take a moment to contemplate the fact that the Church has not done enough to remove the need for such a list...
Some of the items on the list are purely reactionary such as: "Family Values", "Cruelty and violence", "Sex" and "Language". Those identify the things that we typically complain about in secular society, but have not lived out, thought out or at least articulated clearly enough to help people understand what God is after, so they feel the need to call attention to our hypocrisy. Good call. Since Hollywood Jesus itself focuses on mass market entertainment and said entertainment is a major concern for Christians for the reasons listed here, I think we need to look hard and long at this and try and figure out why we're not being understood correctly.
And then there are the 20th Century Civil Rights issues which created the need for proactive interest groups such as: "Injustice", "Intolerance", "Women" and "Homosexuality". Those, ironically, reflect the standards of relating as human beings being raised in the secular arena, while the quality gap widens between that world and the Church. The Church is certainly in upheaval about the morality issues and bringing all the science, psychology, philosophy and hermeneutic to bear on it as it can, but rarely does it make it's stance on how to behave lovingly very clear. This is a thorn in their side.
[Sidebar:]
Read a rippin' great book on this issue recently called, "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis" by William J. Webb. Every Christian should read the Forward and pages 13-66. The rest is for egg-heads. I wish that section were printed separately as a kind of tract for people in the church, with a web-address to the rest tacked on at the end. So few people who attend church actually understand the subtleties of interpretation and application and it's impact. Nor do many realize how flexible we can be and still maintain orthodoxy. It's so important.
[Back to the list of issues:]
The issues I have the least appetite to deal with are the Reason and Logic ones such as: "Absurdity", "Contradictions", "Prophecy" and "Science and History". This stuff irritates me to no end because as I've been discussing with some others lately about the Bible, the rules of debate are corrupted and they provide a place for people without understanding to hide their willful refusal to understand. I am sick to death of hidden agendas and want everyone to put their cards on the table so we can get real. I feel too easily provoked about that and so dislike discussing these issues. I guess what I'm saying is that the Skepticism has become (like what the Church used to be and sometimes still is...) the New Intellectual Oppressor, Dominating World View and Controlling Meta-Narrative and I'm waiting for them to stop being hypocrites before I engage them. Blah-blah-blah. Talk to the hand.
What's left? "Good Stuff" and "Interpretation". Now this is something that interests me! Not just because I like to be told I'm right (because that's not what they're doing here anyway), but that it signals someone who is approachable. Ignoring "good" points and acknowledging only "bad" points is a sign of blind-spots and a lack of willingness. And the Interpretation issue signals the acknowledgment of one of my favorite issues. How do we know that we know what we think we know? Epistemology. If I could, I'd eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If the difference of Biblical interpretation is acknowledged, then it's safe to question all perception and interpretation. Ri-i-i-ight?!?
What a wonderful place to start! So I'm hoping to keep these catagories in mind as I write in the future, always being sensitive to what kinds of things they think are important and how Jesus might address those concerns. I am certain that He would as He intended His News to be Good for all.
Interesting related tid-bit. I read something this morning on Planet Emergent that struck me as pleasently jolting. Instead of calling people who don't believe in Jesus "The Lost" or "Unbelievers" or "Heathen" or "Pagans" or other such marginalizing terms, I saw someone refer to them as "The Missing". Imediately I got a picture in my head of someone on the side of a milk carton with the little frame around their face and the blurb requesting information, offering a reward, and a phone number. Someone loved and missed and agonized over. Fan-freaking-tastic. I'm always on the look out for new terminology that doesn't carry all the gunked up baggage that has been added to it over the centuries since Jesus walked the earth. Anything that is helpful. Anything inclusive and loving. Lewis did the same with analogies. If it doesn't work for you, forget it and move to another one.
Post Script:
I used Outlook Express to do my spell-checking and I just had to "add" the word onanism to the dictionary. Now I don't feel so dumb.
I've been trying to figure out how to put a blogroll on this thing, but I think I have to go outside of blogger to do it. I don't feel confident enough to mess with that just yet, so I've decided to make a post listing as many of the blogs that I read as I can remember. I'll make that a separate entry so that it can stand alone and not have all this intro junk on it.
For now, I'd like to pass on some interesting info that I came across the other day. It happened on the way to trying to find a definition for "onanism" because I'm working on a big thing about The Matrix that I'd like to open up to the world eventually. Yeah, I had to look up that word. I had no clue. I heard Ghost say it in the computer game clip section on the Ultimate dvd collection thing that I got. I thought it was some mystery religion. Maybe it is in a way... I'm a dork. So, while I was figuring out how to spell it correctly (how humiliating), I stumbled upon this link:
The Skeptics Annotated Bible
It fascinated me how much effort (and bandwidth) these people were putting into denying the validity of the Bible. But that aside, I made note of the list of issues on the right side of the page which they deemed important enough to give icons to and categorize their objections under. This list is very informative.
Before anyone goes off half-cocked and says that's the list we need to root out their weaknesses and debate them on... lets take a moment to contemplate the fact that the Church has not done enough to remove the need for such a list...
Some of the items on the list are purely reactionary such as: "Family Values", "Cruelty and violence", "Sex" and "Language". Those identify the things that we typically complain about in secular society, but have not lived out, thought out or at least articulated clearly enough to help people understand what God is after, so they feel the need to call attention to our hypocrisy. Good call. Since Hollywood Jesus itself focuses on mass market entertainment and said entertainment is a major concern for Christians for the reasons listed here, I think we need to look hard and long at this and try and figure out why we're not being understood correctly.
And then there are the 20th Century Civil Rights issues which created the need for proactive interest groups such as: "Injustice", "Intolerance", "Women" and "Homosexuality". Those, ironically, reflect the standards of relating as human beings being raised in the secular arena, while the quality gap widens between that world and the Church. The Church is certainly in upheaval about the morality issues and bringing all the science, psychology, philosophy and hermeneutic to bear on it as it can, but rarely does it make it's stance on how to behave lovingly very clear. This is a thorn in their side.
[Sidebar:]
Read a rippin' great book on this issue recently called, "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis" by William J. Webb. Every Christian should read the Forward and pages 13-66. The rest is for egg-heads. I wish that section were printed separately as a kind of tract for people in the church, with a web-address to the rest tacked on at the end. So few people who attend church actually understand the subtleties of interpretation and application and it's impact. Nor do many realize how flexible we can be and still maintain orthodoxy. It's so important.
[Back to the list of issues:]
The issues I have the least appetite to deal with are the Reason and Logic ones such as: "Absurdity", "Contradictions", "Prophecy" and "Science and History". This stuff irritates me to no end because as I've been discussing with some others lately about the Bible, the rules of debate are corrupted and they provide a place for people without understanding to hide their willful refusal to understand. I am sick to death of hidden agendas and want everyone to put their cards on the table so we can get real. I feel too easily provoked about that and so dislike discussing these issues. I guess what I'm saying is that the Skepticism has become (like what the Church used to be and sometimes still is...) the New Intellectual Oppressor, Dominating World View and Controlling Meta-Narrative and I'm waiting for them to stop being hypocrites before I engage them. Blah-blah-blah. Talk to the hand.
What's left? "Good Stuff" and "Interpretation". Now this is something that interests me! Not just because I like to be told I'm right (because that's not what they're doing here anyway), but that it signals someone who is approachable. Ignoring "good" points and acknowledging only "bad" points is a sign of blind-spots and a lack of willingness. And the Interpretation issue signals the acknowledgment of one of my favorite issues. How do we know that we know what we think we know? Epistemology. If I could, I'd eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If the difference of Biblical interpretation is acknowledged, then it's safe to question all perception and interpretation. Ri-i-i-ight?!?
What a wonderful place to start! So I'm hoping to keep these catagories in mind as I write in the future, always being sensitive to what kinds of things they think are important and how Jesus might address those concerns. I am certain that He would as He intended His News to be Good for all.
Interesting related tid-bit. I read something this morning on Planet Emergent that struck me as pleasently jolting. Instead of calling people who don't believe in Jesus "The Lost" or "Unbelievers" or "Heathen" or "Pagans" or other such marginalizing terms, I saw someone refer to them as "The Missing". Imediately I got a picture in my head of someone on the side of a milk carton with the little frame around their face and the blurb requesting information, offering a reward, and a phone number. Someone loved and missed and agonized over. Fan-freaking-tastic. I'm always on the look out for new terminology that doesn't carry all the gunked up baggage that has been added to it over the centuries since Jesus walked the earth. Anything that is helpful. Anything inclusive and loving. Lewis did the same with analogies. If it doesn't work for you, forget it and move to another one.
Post Script:
I used Outlook Express to do my spell-checking and I just had to "add" the word onanism to the dictionary. Now I don't feel so dumb.
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