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| Currently, I'm waiting to go take a drug test for my new job. Yep, I got a new job. I was about to commute over the hills to wait tables at two restaurants when I landed a non-food service related job the day before I was supposed to start one restaurant and the morning of the day I was interviewing at another which I assumed I would land since I've never not gotten one that I've interviewed for. I'll soon move from the world of serving people food to the wonderful world of pseudo-property management. I say 'pseudo' because it involves maintenance which is a joke if you've ever seen me try to fix something, but it is with a commercial property management firm so perhaps something else is in the works. Interestingly enough, the cell phone issue is involved in this post as well. I got a new cell phone assigned to me by this company. It arrived early this morning via FedEx. So, now instead of one headache I've got two. This just means that I'm racking up the Purgatory years twice as quickly. Have you ever noticed that time in Purgatory is measured in years? Why is that? Does the devil have something against hours? Do clocks in Purgatory even measure hours? I may have just come up with an excuse to call the pope on my new cell phone. The conversation would go something like this,
Pope: "Hello"
Me: "Hi, Pope. I have a little question about Purgatory."
Pope: "Ah, that is my favorite subject. What can I do you for."
Me: "I was doing some thi...Pope, are you there? Are you there? Ahhhh"
Cell Phone: "Call Lost!"
Me (to myself): "I guess I'll have to go sit in the tree." | | |
| If Purgatory exists, I'm screwed so this is an apology to all the people that have put up with my cell phone issues. I'm sure I'm sinning by coaxing you into dropped call after dropped call. Really, y'all should stop calling the Steve for the sole reason that I don't deserve to talk to you until I get another new phone. If you've never experienced a dropped call, "Call me." I guarantee you will have three or ten. So, I'm sorry. I'm making a public apology. I hope the devil doesn't read Xanga, because this will tip him off that my motive here is less than honorable. I figure this apology shaves 5 or 6,000 years off any time I might have to spend in Purgatory which gives me some room to play. Muhahahahahaha.
Recently, I've taken to sitting like a ten year old boy in the gigantic live oak that towers over the hill at the end of the dive to get better reception. Usually this involves wearing sandels and holding a mug of tea along with my cell phone. I'm sure the neighbors think I'm nuts, and if I ever fell, ya, I'd break a hip. Would Verizon care? Don't think so. They would probably drop my call to 911. | | |
| I went to Barns and Noble today to get one book only to walk out with another. Allison, I was going to pick up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but they only had the hard back which I didn't feel like springing for-the library calls. The other happens to be the The Federalist by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. I don't know if I have the stamina to wade through 500 pages of political philosophy, but I've always wanted to read it.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is rather humorous. Can't say that it is making me laugh out loud as say, Catch 22, but it is funny. The topic of the mental institution is a bit overworked. The author's views on how the institution controls its constituents and is unbeatable from the inside are really good, though. In one instance, the head nurse is leading a discussion that consists of the patients constantly going back over their past failings. The patients sit there not saying anything until she brings up information on a patient from a past discussion. Then all hell breaks loose. Isn't this like dorm meetings or corporate ones for that matter? The employee meetings I've sat through are just like this. Once the conversation opens up, all those who are getting worked by "The man" (perhaps there is no man) lay into one another about who is or isn't doing something that is supposedly causing problems. Just what "The man" wants. I guess that is what leadership is...instigation. Supposedly this happens in chicken flocks. Once on chicken gets a bit of blood on it, the other chickens go on a peck fest. Soon, one after the other is wounded only to get pecked to death. That would be a brilliant sight, although I wouldn't want to clean up after it. Jans, you could have made this happen out in Iowa. | | |
| I've moved on to other literature, but want to comment again on Colossians Remixed, because I feel compelled. "Too often appeals to the objective truth of the gospel have served as a means for the church to evade its responsibility to live faithfully before the world...What our world is waiting for, and what the church seems reluctant to offer, is not more incessant talk about objective truth, but an embodied witness that clearly demonstrates why anyone should care about any of this in the first place." This quote made me laugh so hard when I first read it that I'm sure I was sinning. I read it wrong, though, which made me cry a bit, and then laugh again. I first understood the authors to be questioning the value of the church's incessant pursuit of objective truth. I mean, does it really matter as much as we make it out to matter? I know, that sounds ridiculous, but the meaning of life only hinges on objective truth to certain kinds of knowers. What if God never intended for us to know in the fashion almost implicit in the idea of objective truth. Not to be sardonic, but this is an hysterical thought in light of the importance given to the idea of objective truth.
The authors were saying none of that. Make yourself forget what I just wrote. They were not questioning the church's pursuit of objective truth or the value of objective truth. They were questioning just what it is that arrests the attention of a non-believer in the first place. Is it just getting bombarded by words that have positive truth content? What they are saying is that the church's appeals to objective truth are well couched excuses to be lazy. Think about it. Objective truth is static. It is also supposedly contextless. It is autonomous truth for the autonomous individual. We don't have to Be anything if we are just spouting objective truth. (In fact, us Being anything might just get in the way.) The content is independent of the medium, so we can blame someone else for the truth not getting through. This is an old argument for sure, but timely. It could just be that not only the transmission of the truth, but our believing and being confident in it both ride on phenomena like, "our hearts being encouraged" which give not only the non-believer but the believer "reason to care about any of this in the first place."
I'm not just writing of witnessing here. What is it about our faith that is good, beautiful and worth of praise? Is it the truth content of our propositions? Yes, but only that? Is it how they weave together? Yes, but only that? Nah, there is some reification involved, and I shouldn't have to even mention the most praiseworthy example of this concept. So, I won't, and it doesn't make Him any less praiseworthy.
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| OK, I'm not still reading this book. I want to comment on it, however. Oh, and btw, it is a good read. I'm just going to talk mainly about one point here in this ramble.
For starters, the authors do not handle the text in straight forward exegetical fashion, but they make a point worth the deviation, and the point goes far beyond what I'm going to talk about here. This point is that Rome was a totalizing regime complete with metanarrative that wasn't as overtly antagonistic to other religions as the word 'totalitarian' might suggest. Actually, it was more seductive than this. Paul speaking to the Colossians is similiar to him speaking to us today in this respect. The authors seem to be making the point that not all belief systems were hostile to the empire, and that those that were could be domesticated in a certain way. Acknowledging the emperor as head of state as well as a deity was just one litmus test. Along with this, accepting the order and symbols of roman life was a more subtle criteria. A belief system could be tolerated in a member of society if the person didn't cross the social mores and accepted the symbols of roman life such as the proliferation of the emperor's image and attending or at least feigning interest in the feasts/games prevalent at the time. We do the same thing, right? Our minds are filled with the symbols of global capitalism whether it be the Nike swoosh or Chevron's chevron. If we are not captivated by the in season sport or conversant in the names of the actors in the latest movie than we are just not as cool as we could be. We might not subscribe to Sports Illustrated or go see a new movie staring "Actor X." This is not to say that being such is not being a Christian, but global consumer capitalism is a lot more accepting and comfortable with someone who is. The authors are saying that our imaginations have been filled with images of the empire of consumption in which we live, and that it may be a sign that we have let our faith be domesticated. I'm not sure just what symbols our minds could be filled with instead, but our attention is being constantly averted, and we are being beckoned to consume. Seriously, are we going to be worried about the Nike swoosh on our robes when we get to heaven? Worn properly, it is a sign of someone who "gets" culture down here. Just why are we so concerned with this? Why are we so concerned with being seen as someone who is cultured? I am absolutely not saying that being cultured is not something to pursue, but, perhaps these images are at best neutral or utilitarian. Perhaps they are just the signs of consumption. If so, what are the positive symbols we should be captivated by and honed in on? Love? Joy? Peace? Patience? For that matter, 'responsibility.' I don't know, 'hard work.' Point is, if we give up our hunger to consume, we stand out. I like this point the authors make, and I wonder, have we lost our ability to recognize the signs of being Christ like. Perhaps we have lost our ability to love being Christ like. Is there anywhere in your life where you are not being beckoned to consume various symbols of the political-economic system in which we live? Are we being seduced? | | |
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