Vows

As I turned 20 this year, I made vows to last the entire year. I also have created a new blog to journal my year with respect to the vows. Since it is related to theology, I thought that it would be a reasonable idea to link to it here.

Vows

Who Crucified Jesus?

The Scriptures tell us it was an easily swayed mob that called for Jesus to be crucified and Barabbas to be released. Not the Jews as a whole but rather those in position of power over them who led the drive for crucifixion. They could just as easily have been Americans swayed by powerful politicians. The mob, I might venture, was poor and working-class, whatever meaning working-class could have had in that day. The people in power were likely better off, and possibly even some of them rich. Who crucified Jesus? The rich and the poor, the blind and the seeing, the sheep and the goats. All of these. Even Peter, who in the Catholic Church is regarded as the first Pope, in a sense crucified Jesus by his vehement denial of Christ. In a theological sense it is taught, and I believe it proper to believe, that you and I share the responsibility for this Crucifixion. But what does that mean historically? Does it mean that had we been there we would have been among the ringleaders or the mob? Was there not one human being in all of the Roman Empire who knew of the Crucifixion and did not somehow consent? Or does it simply mean that by virtue of our sinful nature we contribute to the necessity of Christ's death and resurrection? Is there any other sense in which it is proper to say that we crucify Jesus?

The Central Doctrine

What is the central doctrine of Christianity?

Is it the Incarnation? Do we consider the Resurrection as a doctrine separate from the Incarnation event, the Christ-event as it were, and as such a separate choice as the central doctrine of Christianity? If so, are they equal or is one more important than the other? Is either of these more important than the doctrine that God created the world? Is the doctrine of Creation even really a valid choice here, given that it is hardly specific to Christianity?

I am tempted to say, if we take Christian-specific doctrines as the standard, that the central doctrine of Christianity would have to be the Incarnation of Christ. I'm still working on that, though; I haven't looked at much material on what the central doctrine is.

If I were worried merely about being funny and not about my orthodoxy I might even venture to say that the central doctrine of Christianity is "God wins." Thoughts?

One of those "Well, Duh" Sorts of Headlines, also:

Well, I'm not sure this needed a news story. Though I think it probably is newsworthy, it's not like you wouldn't expect this from the UCC. I'll be reading the letter at my leisure and commenting accordingly, but hopefully it's good stuff.

I'm also working on a 5-day cycle of reading the Book of James. It's quite interesting and it's going to make me look at my life in uncomfortable new ways. In fact, it already has. Like the fact that I still fail the part in James 1:19 about everyone being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

KPCN01: KKairos Posts Christology Notes

This is a new thing. I'm not good enough at paying attention to homilies yet to summarize those. But I will be posting my Christology notes (when sufficiently entertaining) this semester. Today is easily one of those days. I will post in each segment a "page #" followed by stuff on that page. About 1/4 of my notes for the day (and I suspect will be in the future) was stuff I wrote that just paraphrased the stuff in the handed-out outline. Another 1/4 is my individual speculation on things. The last half or so is notes to and from another amateur theologian who is strong in the Catholic tradition and sits next to me. Enjoy. All errors in my notes are reproduced, unless they spell something I can't write on a blog. Some stuff is followed by discussion.

Page #3

So the consensus seems to be that what's being condemned by the text is "conservative inclusivism and what is advocated is more "liberal" inclusivism? [The author of the text seemed to be advocating a reverence of other religions and/or the truth thereof while maintaining the uniqueness of Christ.]

Undoing the inauthenticity of the Hist-Jesus Quest [I believe this was about alternative/not-in-power beliefs being ignored in the historical Jesus quest, but that may be fuzzy.]

Barth a Hist-Jesus person? Or a Kerygma, nothing-to-say-about-history person? Hmm. I am not so sure. [the theologians of the "no quest" historical Jesus period were later represented in a light which allows for more acceptance on their part of access to history of Jesus; in other words this was under the impression that Barth was a little more pessimistic about access to the historical Jesus than I had thought he was, which might be true or might not.]

"Any person who closes the issue...[it's] out of an insecurity." - [A classmate]
generally true, but not mathematically. I'm thinking too mathematically!

People don't generally wake up in the morning and say to themselves, "I'm going to support the dominant social structure and make a better effort to be an intentionally sexist person" But it does happen, less intentionally so, but it happens. [This was a response to talk about how you usually wind up supporting a power structure that supports you, even in scholarly work, and even if you don't intend to.]

Page #4

CALVINISM [this was a response to my fellow theologian's emphasis in a note to me that our professor had told us that we would be introduced to Edward Schillebeeckx "And you will come to love him." The underlining was done by my friend, not really in her voice.]

I'm starting to think the egalitarian-authoritarian-complementarian relationship in Christianity is more complex and nuanced than any one specific viewpoint in Christian theology will ever grasp.

Egal-Comp-auth refers to:
* relationship of authority/egalitarianism with respect to Jesus, heirarchy and laity; what does it mean to be "equals" in a faith community?
* proper relationship of complementarianism/egalitarianism in a marriage, also with respect to Jesus' authority over the marriage or whether either spouse has authority over and above the other

[For now I'll let these notes speak for themselves. Trying to go into it would be too much.]

Anglican womenpriests fleeing to Catholicism. [a note to my friend after the professor noted the author's contention that a pour-and-stir approach to things (in this case merely adding women to the hierarchy without making much other social change) was inadequate, thinking of the the recent articles featured on The Curt Jester weblog.]

Dangerous memory --> challenges to Status QUO [a note about the notion of Jesus and early Christianity as a dangerous memory that challenges social structures instead of supporting them.]

So The Way = a prophetic and Wisdom tradition, Jesus as First Among Equals [I won't go into all of this, except to say that I'm not sure I understand the JaFAE phrase and that I'm really not sure I'm correctly interpreting my professor's synopsis of the author's claims about the relation of Wisdom to the Jesus Movement in Judaism. That said, I'm still fairly confident in said interpretation.]

So there you have it. My first posting of theology notes. Enjoy.

Coming in 2008

In an effort to make sure I stay awake/aware at Sunday night mass I'll be doing a brief analysis of all the homilies I hear on Sunday night or the Monday morning after. I'll also be taking Suffering and Death and Christology as my theology courses, so there'll be some extra fun there. I'll let Xeirx add his piece as he sees fit.

Breakthrough

I had been struggling for months for the elusive goal of becoming close to God. Trying everything that I had, I had eventually almost given up the fight entirely. In fact, the fight was being lost quickly. One night I prayed to God that He would not only help me, but help me to want Him--because I realized that I had not even desired His company or His wisdom for a very, very long time.

This prayer is what brought things around. God changed my heart, He changed my wants and interests around. Then I thought for while about this. Why couldn't I have changed my own desires?

My conclusions:

I do not have free will: will to change what I desire.

I do what I desire.

God is merciful, God has power over all things--God is the only one who can change an unwilling, icy heart into a beating one all over again.

Lessons on Dreams from Scrubs and Chrono Trigger

Probably the biggest lesson that ever came out of the TV series Scrubs is that not everything you want is something you really want, or something you should have. For approximately three seasons we see the lead character J.D. chasing his friend Elliot romantically. They have an on-and-off relationship (marked, mind you, by many incidents that probably aren’t the favorite of morally conservative Christianity.) However, near the end of the show's first three years, they finally attain some sort of secured "relationship." Immediately after they solidify their relationship, J.D. pauses for one of the show's trademark inner monologues (I'm paraphrasing here.)

"The trouble with guys that want what they can't have is, once they get it, they realize they don't want it." A few moments pass, and then J.D. suddenly realizes that "I don't want her!" So what he chases for three years without much success, he finally gets—and then he finds he doesn't really want it after all! What a predicament to be in.

Sometimes I wish Chrono Trigger had been a movie instead of a video game. Not only would it be automatically more respected (a state of culture that I'm not quite in sync with) but there's at least one big lesson. In the game there's this floating Kingdom of Zeal (that's the real name, mind) whose queen and higher-ups are trying to control powers that it cannot control in order to allow its peoples advanced technology. To put it in perspective, these "powers" really consist of the main villian of the game. At any rate, when the characters are going through Zeal for the first time, they meet a creature who utters this sentence: "This is the eternal Kingdom of Zeal, where dreams can come true. But at what price?"

The ominous tone set by the creature's statement is very much validated by the fall of Zeal, quite literally from the sky, as a result of its attempts to control this great power, this main villian. I'm oversimplifying things a bit, but you probably get the idea. Zeal attains so much by way of manipulation of power that it turns out unable to control.

I think if we wanted to take some things away from these examples, as far as Christianity goes, we might say that we might allow ourselves the dreams God does not want for us, and might even attain them for awhile--but the price will be heavy and hard, and oftentimes the things we think we want leave us unfulfilled and wanting. And if we do not check ourselves, we find that the dreams we have may destroy us in the end. I go so far to say that, like the Queen of Zeal in Chrono Trigger, we sometimes think we can control our sin, and discover too late that it is the other way around.

Of course, there is a solution. It's not at all easy and it's never the most fun thing, but Scripture tells us "[b]ut seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:7 NIV)." We must seek the will of God before everything else--dreams, desires and all other things, even if they are not inherently sinful. There are, for reasons we often discover later, girls (or guys, but guys are running this blog) we are not supposed to be with, teams we aren't supposed to make, jobs we aren't supposed to land and opportunities we aren't really supposed to take. And naturally, if we are seeking the will of God, we ought to be avoiding trying to domesticate sin.

KK's thoughts continued

I heard something interesting in KK's post and I thought it was time to do my own rambling.

His post says that we shouldn't "push" people into Christianity, but rather "pull" them into it. I whole-heartedly agree, and I feel like I have some interesting thoughts to add. Whenever you push something, you're stepping outside of the bounds of where it's going, and using force from the other direction to get the task accomplished. With witnessing, we don't want to use the world's tactics to try to reach goals set by God.

Jesus never forced a person into the faith, never elbowed them or shoved them so that they would seek Him. I always imagine Him as being a kind, loving person, however a man who was also so filled with things of God that the people around Him could see it. They knew that He knew something, but He never had to convince them of it. In this way He gained a lot of respect from some people, but others grew to hate Him.

I think a good Christian witness is the kind where you feel very guilty and sore after meeting with them, but they never did anything to cause it. I know a friend of mine who is very serious about Christianity and so driven to God, that when I interacted with him, I felt guilty myself about my own walk; but he never did or said anything that was intentionally aimed at making me feel that way. He simply lived his life and it was more effective than any sort of verbal exhortation I'd received.

I think that there is room for both exhortation from the pulpit and some healthy exhortation outside of a Sunday morning (or whenever you hear preaching), but I don't think that it lends towards helping a brother as much as living in a Godly way yourself. When you walk into a church, you have given the preacher permission to exhort you. However, in your day-to-day life, any random one of your friends may not have the kind of respect in your eyes that warrants verbal exhortation. I know that some of my friends have tried to talk to me about how to improve on certain aspects of my life, but a lot of them don't have my respect in those areas, so I can't really listen to them. It's not that I need someone who's never failed to tell me I'm wrong (I have Jesus for that), I just need someone who is living that way right now.

Anyway, this is also totally unstructured mess of thoughts, but hopefully it will spur more thoughts onward.

I've Been Thinking a Lot Lately

I've been thinking a lot lately about evangelism, and exactly how it ought to work. I know of the Billy Graham model of evangelism and I think there's a certain place for it, but I think that place is only with certain Christians and that it is, quite frankly, not for everyone. But then, what is for everyone else?

Certainly, we can't just sit around doing nothing. The Great Commission commands us to go and make disciples of all the nations. So we've got...a fairly high standard to meet, it seems. But how do we meet this standard?

I was talking with a Christian friend of mine a few days ago about the concept of evangelism. She had talked about finding it hard to "push" religion, as far as the possibility of someone's conversion to Christianity at least, although she does make an effort to live the Christian life and has found herself involved in various religious discussions with non-Christians.

I started thinking about this in terms of the question of "how should we then live?" Things seemed to fall into place, and I'm starting to think that it would be a good idea, not to exclude the Billy Graham model of evangelism, but rather to say that persons using this model and persons not using the BG model should all live in such a way not as to awkwardly "push" religion on others, but to live in such a way that they exert a natural "pull"--that is, that people are naturally drawn to them because the way they live is not the way the world lives. And then there is opportunity for discussion about what one believes and why one believes it, whether or not one is preaching the Gospel from the pulpit.

At abt ratem ut;'s ... er.

At any rate, it's 3:29 AM as I write this and I'm likely rambling on.

[Actually posted a few days later by KKairos.]