Something interesting over a MavPhil:
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/04/time-trouble.html
Compare to this old post of mine:
Sunday, April 19, 2015
MavPhil & LJ
Something interesting over a MavPhil:
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/04/time-trouble.html
Compare to this old post of mine:
On Depression
The way I deal with depression is with patterns of positivity. Patterns of positive activity and people. Going to lunch with specific people, doubling down at my job, dance, meditation, prayer, these create patterns that introduce into my being the positivity my mind had trouble creating. Telling a depressive to "think positive" is like telling a diabetic to produce more insulin, it is the inability to produce these that is exactly the problem. But good patterns can introduce good thoughts from the outside. These structures become a ladder you use to pull yourself back into the light. They can be very effective. Times get shorter and downs get less intense. Yet life happens and the structures can get interrupted. Sometimes these are like stumbles and you can find your footing. But sometimes a rung can break and you can have a bad fall. At those times structures have to go through re-building. New relationships must be built and new patterns created. This can be tough work, but it will work. The light will always come again. But man, can the darkness linger, and ladders can be hard to build.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Jesus Vs Frank Underwood
I just saw what may be the most theologically significant display in any media ever on HOUSE OF CARDS...the Gospel laid out in stark and terrifying detail. Underwood as Satan, embodying coercive power, tempted but only momentarily by the power of persuasive love, confronted by the truth and rabidly attacking it. Blind to true power and consumed by its satanic ape. Wow, that is what the Gospels were really about, that was the reason for Jesus' rejection of political messianism. Have you seen the episode I'm talking about. Crazy, disturbing, filled with the contrast between truth and lies.
It's A Wonderful Life
It's pretty amazing, when you think about it: an organization pays me to go around and serve God by helping people, training people to be more than they are and just generally make the world a better place. And I'm not bad at it apparently. Ministry like what I do is like being a professional superhero. What a statement of value the church makes by doing that, too, by paying for relational, active ministry. It is like the church says "yes, world, this is what we value, and this is what we want the world to be."
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Staring Into The Face Of God
I looked into the Face of God many times this week. Sitting with friends who hold his presence, suffering with people in need. In needing other people and being needed. In scripture, in dreams, in dance and in the embrace of my wife. It raised my spirits and broke me at the same time. It feels like it will burn me into nothingness and I just want it forever. I laugh like a fool and ball like a baby. Do you see it? I sure hope so. Life's not worth living without suffering like that, and no one ever had more fun.
The Way, The Truth, The Life
This is a comment on this article:
I believe that Jesus is the only way to God, and that being because of his dying and rising again. I am also a universalist. I don't think what you believe gives you access to heaven. I don't think what you do gives you access, either. At least, not on their own. You have access to Heaven BECAUSE Jesus died and returned. Why think this? Well nothing Jesus teaches is all that radical, except to the degree that they reflect on the nature of God as revealed in Jesus' own life, death, and return. Plus I see no moral answer to the problem of sin, which seems intractable to me (this was cemented for all time for me in Reinhold Niebuhr's Nature & Destiny of Man). I see Christ as the only solution. Biblically, also, while what the man says about the Gospels is true and rightly said, it ignores the fact that the entirety of the rest of the New Testament is a reflection almost solely on Jesus death & resurrection. So there must be some accounting for that.
In the end the ONLY way Jesus changes our view of God is if we take Him to BE God, to show us what God is. But that statement does contradict what other religions say on the nature of Ultimate Reality. The problem with Fundamentalism isn't that it gives too much primacy to Jesus, but that it gives too little. It elevates a book over the man-God. And it denies the power of God and the centrality of the Cross by giving power to man's credulity over and against Christ.
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-pain-of-truth.html
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)