reciprocality

I'll admit a major fault of mine: I tend to ditch out on conversations when I'm not excited about them. Typically when I blog it's because there's some idea that's really got me excited, I write about it, I move on. Then I get questions which force me to realize how poorly I expressed such ideas, or that make me feel the need to research to adequately back up what I just said . . . and the truth is I don't care enough to put that much effort into it. Nonetheless it is true that the only thing that keeps me motivated to write these things is the conversation aspect of it all. When I don't hear back, I don't write. So, all that to say, sorry Kristin. It was mostly laziness, and, no, I haven't grouped you in with people I cut off for disagreeing with.

Here goes:

1. In regard to truth existing outside of language as some static entity . . . I don't know. I haven't made up my mind on that one. I firmly doubt that any language has the capacity to adequately display truth. So I don't think it is accurate to ever say a statement is true . . . even though we will all continue to do so out of convenience and because that's how the English language works. In my mind, to say a statement is true, is sort of hyperbole. I think it would be accurate to say that a statement approaches truth, that it bears likeness to truth, but I don't really think it is possible for a verbal formula to ever encompass truth to the extent that we identify such statement as "true". Yet, again, I think we all continue to say that things are 'true', because that is how we have learned to speak. I would probly get annoyed with myself if I forced myself at all times to say that things approached or finitely contacted the truth. Nonetheless I feel the need to keep track in my head of what I really mean to say. I don't think in the realm of language we can ever take anything at face value.

2. Is discipleship the ultimate goal of following Jesus? Well that seems to what the writers of the Bible thought. They seem pretty emphatic that Jesus wants disciples, and that those who go into the world in his name should make disciples of/in all nations. My issue with this is mostly just a pragmatic one. I meet people frequently of late, who will not be disciples. That's just a fact. Also, in that regard, I think they avoid talking or thinking about Jesus because of the fact that there is an overt agenda on the part of all Christians to make them into disciples. Reflecting back on to what it must have been like when Jesus walked the earth, I don't believe that everyone who heard him speak became a disciple. Yet, I don't really think we can say that Jesus didn't bring some degree of 'salvation' into their lives nonetheless. The people he healed: I don't get the idea that all of them became disciples. Yet they were healed, if not for their discipleship, then mostly because, however briefly, they simply followed him . . . even if only for the brief hours he spent passing through their town, walking through their fields, sitting on their shore. I think we desperately need an arena in modern Christianity for people to simply come into the presence of Jesus as a man, as a teacher, as anything BUT a religious figure. I think that people who do consider themselves to be his disciples need to see the vast importance of respecting human choice and the capacity of EVERY person to interpret Jesus for themselves. I think that claiming Jesus as Lord, Son of God, or simply as rabbi, these are all legitimate interpretations that people will come to based on their experience of him. And, how can they gain such experience of him if discipleship is the ONLY focus, and only respected outcome? If they change things in their lives, but don't call themselves a Christian in the end, can we call this a failure?? Or rather, shouldn't we celebrate the Kingdom of God, as it has increased the good in their life, since after all, that appears to be the chief concern of Jesus himself?

3. Atonement: I'll keep this short. Basically I cannot and won't believe in a God who requires a human atrocity, a child sacrifice, the spilling of blood to rectify his sense of justice. In my mind, that is a perverse sense of justice that is certainly not divine, and in my mind not even worthy of being called human. To me it represents the utmost inhumanity. I can respect what it meant for people in the first century, but I think it has become a mockery of God to believe in our modern context that this presents an acceptable picture of the nature of God. I think we have come to know God better, and I think it is time we abandoned the language that suggests that he was the one who required Jesus' crucifixion to atone for the sins of the world.

4. Virgin birth and truth: 1) There's a lot of debate on this, but nonetheless in Hebrew the word for virgin and young girl were basically interchangeable. So, at least during the oral tradition stage before the NT was written down, there is no clear indication as to whether it was meant to say that Jesus was born of a girl who had never had sex, or simply of a girl who was very, very young. This is significant to me in terms of meaning because it shows that the story of Jesus begins with a girl from an impoverished area, who was in the precarious position of being pregnant out of wedlock, probably under the age of 14. It is hard to imagine a more marginalized and unfortunate character. 2) Later, decades later, Luke (who has little grasp on the nuances of Hebrew) and Matthew take the oral traditions and each create birth narratives. There are vast portions of both narratives that seems quite unhistorical. (i.e. the gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh would likely have been enough to secure the purchase to the entire town of Bethlehem including the inn that refused them a room. Thus, Joseph was either a gambler, and idiotic businessman, or the gifts are symbolic and didn't really happen) So, for me, the birth narratives in the NT have nothing to do with history, but are rather making bold implicit statements about the meaning the early Christians had found in Jesus. If there were no magi, the theatrical statement implied is that this Jesus is the king of kings, that rulers from afar, ones who are in tune with God, should recognize the nature of divinity in this man and give him the finest of their wealth. That's a bold assertion, however subtle, in a province ruled by Rome where Caesar demanded that kings of all his conquered nations bring him gold, and burn incense to his divinity in Rome. It's a political statement, not a historical account. For me the point is that I can see God working as an inhuman tyrant, or as a human, and utterly human, impoverished peasant and teacher. The point in the gospels has little if anything to do with factual truth, but rather with the very nature of God . . . in such a discussion facts fade into irrelevance, while statements of meaning carry the greatest importance.

5. For me, the point of Jesus is the experience of God, and the reality that we call his Kingdom for lack of a better term. I feel that there was a time in my life where Christianity introduced me and brought me to see this reality and the God therein, but as I've changed and grown Christianity has done more to repel me from it. It has distracted me and tried to fit my understanding of it into frames of reference that have nothing to do with God and everything to do with tradition and politics. The harder I feel this pressed upon me the more I feel the need to push the other direction, the more I feel the need to distance myself from any sort of allegiance for the sake of being able to find a faith that is true; in the fullest sense, true. At this point in my life, I can't even pretend I have anything to 'offer' someone were they to ask me about Jesus. I could challenge someone and help them find liberation from conventionality in faith, but to guide them directly to God, I won't pretend I have found a clear path. For all my wanderings in the desert, which I've found is quite beautiful though also fearful, I still haven't found a way to guide others. I'll guide you out of Egypt, but I haven't found Canaan yet. Maybe some day.



Marcos:
heres' some Kung for you, he spends a lot of time talking about the alternatives of faith in the most basic sense, or nihilism, both he argues, are legitimate, and both are more indicative of attitudes than of mental processes.

"'The academic expert, concentrated on his special field (mathematics, history, natural science), does not like to be told that basic assumptions of his thinking are metaphysical in character; the metaphysician does not like to be told that his mental activity rests on a prerational, primordial decision; philosophers of all types - apart from skeptics - do not like to be told that the kinds of skepticism that are to be taken seriously are irrefutable; and skeptics themselves, of all shades, do no like to admit that they cannot prove their standpoint. Such a complex assessment more or less provokes the indignant protest: 'This cannot possibly be your last word. One way or another, there must be a solution of some kind.' To which I can reply: 'The solution is in your hands, and any time. Make up your mind. Decide.'"

"even the reasonableness of reason is often uncertain. And, it is not an argument of reason, but a trust in reason, that even critical rationalists must simply assume as the basis of their entire system. Karl Popper saw this clearly and admitted it: 'Rationalism appreciates argument and theory and verification by experience. But this decision for rationalism cannot in its own turn be justified by argument and experience. Although it can be discussed, it rests ultimately on an irrational decision, on faith in reason."

His basic point is that this faith in anything, whether science, religion, or simply waking up in the morning, stems from our attitude toward reality which is an attitude we each choose.

"a particular attitude to life, to the world, to reality. But, in the face of the threat so often concretely experienced in ordinary life by the nothingness, transitoriness, decay, forlorness, finiteness of all that is human and earthly, even the person who passes his life in mental idiocy and superficiality is continually forced to make a decision."

I hear the silence too. Frequently. I'm not convinced that it's final though, and I doubt you are either. I think that is one thing I gleaned from Six Feet Under, at the end of it all, men will pursue meaning at the cost of everything . . . essentially the pursuit of meaning is the last choice that anyone makes . . not that that's what Alan Ball was trying to say, just that's something I came to understand through it. I think it's true that meaninglessness is not a viable option. We can make due in the midst of it, but in the long run meaning is what matters. And for me, and perhaps for you, it is always illusive. Yet, for myself, I've decided it's there even when I'm not sure where.