Jesus Christ, Superstar

Daddy, you asked for just thoughts, not a paper. Well, this is a stream of thoughts I had today... completely raw and unedited! lol just for you. so if it's crazy... and bold... well... it wasn't really meant for publishing :) haha

Moral standards change over time; through generations and within lifetimes. Personal experiences and social events affect our morals. Virtue: behavior showing high moral standards. It has often been said that morality and the human conscious of good and evil has derived from the existence of a higher being, or God. Christianity as a religion points to God as the source of wisdom in determining good and evil, and Jesus Christ embodies this wisdom in human form. If God is the Christian’s source of wisdom concerning good and evil, then Jesus is the ultimate virtuous person, and being such he becomes the symbol &/or representative of our faith.

But, is it the historical person of Jesus Christ, and all the virtues he embodied that plays the role as our representative? Or is the Scriptural depiction of Jesus traded in for a more culture-conscious Jesus?

As moral standards change over time, or even as some virtues become more emphasized than others, the human embodiment of a virtuous person looks different. This may be compared to the acknowledgment that the definition of a “beautiful woman” changes over time as perceptions of beauty and sexuality are transformed. This may explain how one generation viewed Aphrodite as the depiction of female beauty and sexuality, while another looks to Marilyn Monroe. This, experience and event informed worldview/morality theory may also be revealed in one generation’s veneration for someone who has “accomplished the American Dream” compared to another’s admiration of the apparently contradictory globally-aware justice-advocate.

Seeing Jesus as a virtuous person in perfection, the church adapts his image to fit the most admired virtues of the day. During WW1 the church promoted Jesus as a Grand Soldier, a 1999 campaign add for a church event depicted Jesus as Che Guevera, and shirts declaring “Jesus is my Homeboy” were mass distributed in 2007. Whether or not one receives these statements as blasphemous or not, she must ask if these depictions have been developed by the culture or for the culture? And, is it possible to distinguish between the two?

not all is lost

i feel so tired. sin looks so different these days. the law of sin and death.

For when we were controlled by the sinful nature the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit of death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

Romans

it's shocking. sin, not being simply a reality- which would be horrific in itself- but a law that is at work against us. This law has power over us. It causes us to inflict pain. It gives us the power to engage in awful acts of evil, causing so much more pain than we could ever think of intending to cause on our own. Similar to the way we cannot comprehend God with our finite minds, we cannot comprehend the miracle of human influence.

it's painful. to see this law of sin and death reign in the world. it's sobering.

Jesus looks different these days.

The sins we commit, the pain we cause one another, has the potential to literally sever our ability to relate to one another. In other words...

sin brought death. When someone dies we are no longer able to be in relationship with them. I think of the aching I feel for lost loved ones... I just want to talk again. I want to rewind time. I want them to return from the dead, be alive again, resurrect. I want reconciliation to happen in the form of a miracle, so that I don't have to live without them.

i wonder at how God experienced sin. in the sense that it separated us from him. we hear about the bridge analogy, you know ... we are separated from God and Jesus is our bridge. And we hear scriptures saying we were dead in our transgressions.

This looks so real to me now. I imagine us being dead to God, unable to be in relationship with God, in the same way that I am unable to be in relationship with a friend, a human, who has physically died. Who I have absolutely no hope of seeing again.

We are dead to God. It would take a miracle, like the one I pray for with my Grandpa, already buried, for us to be able to have a relationship with God. As impossible as it is for me to bring my papa back, it was impossible to bring me, you, (creation), back to life.

This is everything that Jesus Christ is.

This is why Jesus had to be fully God and fully man. No other being would do.

"In Jesus Christ, as he is attested in Holy scripture, we are not dealing with man in the abstract: not with the man who is able with his modicum of religion and religious morality to be sufficient unto himself without God and thus himself to be God. But neither are we dealing with God in the abstract: not with one who in His deity exists only separated from man, distant and strange and thus a non-human if not indeed a inhuman God. In Jesus Christ there is no isolation of man from God or of God from man. Rather, in Him we encounter the history, the dialogue, in which God and man can meet together and are together, the reality of the covenant mutually contracted, preserved and fulfilled by them. Jesus Christ is in His one Person, as true God, man's loyal partner, and as true man, God's." Barth

"why did the Word, who is God, make a virgin the mother of his own flesh with a conception straight from the Holy Spirit? ... in order to reconstitute our condition with himself... This was why he himself became the first one to be born of the Holy Spirit so that he could trace a path for grace to come to us. ... He is from God, from on high, and naturally God, and yet he came down to our condition in a strange and most unusual manner, and was born of the Spirit, according to the flesh, so that we too might abide in holiness and incorruptibility like him. Clearly grace came upon us from him, as from a new rootstock, a new beginning."

St Cyril of Alexandria

how can i go on? through sacrifice and death... restoration was brought about.

This law of sin and death. This evil that is working against me. against you...

the pain we cause one another every day.

It is redeemable. It has been made right. so that when our worst fears come true... when we cause the worst pain, inflict the worst evil, separate ourselves from all that is good...

it can ALWAYS be made right.

our worst fears will happen... but they will be redeemed, and the consequences we deserve from these fears will not come.

i long to rewind time. God won't rewind time. but God will restore us.

friends will die. my mama and daddy will die. and it will break my heart. I will experience their absence. and i'll cry, and long to be in relationship with them again... just to have another conversation, another hug... another meal another laugh...

and I will. God will give them back to me. Christ has made reconciliation.

not all is lost.

Radical Indigenism Part II

Gourroutte sets the stage for a recognition and dignifying of spirituality to occur. These ideas are based on an understanding of truth as Relative. Priest compares the practice of anthropology with that of theology, noting the lack of attention given by anthropology to specifically moral and ethical language. Priest is still operating with a relative understanding of truth, but pressing for an interaction with moral and ethical quandaries pertaining to specific cultures. Priest also suggests a universal trend of morality. He says “it is best then if we think of sin, not as a metaphysical concept, but as a sensitizing concept, as a working tool orienting us to comparable areas in other cultures” (66). He invites the anthropologist to “explore universal and variable features of ethical systems”(71). This language carefully avoids language which would suggest absolute truth. The Christian enters the conversation from a completely different perspective concerning truth. This perspective claims the absolute truth of the Jesus Christ and the gospel, but I don’t believe this deprives us our ability to engage in this reorientation process.

The Western Church is in need of a movement towards Radical Indigenism in our consideration of other cultures and their faith practices. This will require a humble approach, seeking not only to dignify the experiences and history of foreign cultures, but in addition, to acquire compassion and empathy for other cultural practices, whilst ever holding on to the essential and absolute truth of the gospel. This approach continues anthropology’s wise concept of reorientation and the tradition of honoring foreign practices, while ridding itself of moral relativity.

If one understands identity as “‘who we are, where we’re coming from... the background against which our tastes and desires and opinions and aspirations make sense...’”, the process of reorienting oneself and attempting to indigenize provides a more accurate picture of the infrastructure supporting a foreign culture’s engagement with truth, morality, and sin (Ackerman 11). This more accurate understanding of the backdrop against which foreign practices make sense relieves Christians of wasting time imposing the understandings we carry from our unique orientations, and enables us to communicate and receive truth more effectively.

Just as Garroutte calls the scholars in her field to a Radical Inigenism which would demand of them a “reassertion and rebuilding of traditional knowledge from its roots, its fundamental principles,” I am advocating that Radical Indigenism be implemented in the Church today (101). This would demand a reassessment of the meaning of syncretism and a more critical examination of our own culture. Walls states that all that is true is “cloaked with such heavy veils belonging to their environment that Christians of different times and places must often be unrecognizable to others, or indeed even to themselves, as manifestations of a single phenomenon”(7). We are responsible as Christians to look beyond the veils, allow room for truth in our perceptions of others. We must recognize foreign desires to “‘indigenize,’ to live as Christian and yet as a member of one’s own society” to be as pure as we see our own desire (7). We must recognize our attempts at indigenization to be as fallen as theirs. Let us identify with one another in our brokenness, our salvation through grace, and our desperate need of the Holy Spirit’s guidance into truth. Radical Indigenism can open the doors for Christians to form a unique perspective founded on the truth of the gospel including it’s continuity and transcendence through space, culture and time.

in addition to the readings listed on the previous post, this post has been informed by

After the Locusts: Letters from a Landscape Faith- Denise M Ackerman

The Missionary Movement in Christian History:Studies in the Transmissions of Faith- Andrew F. Walls

Radical Indigenism

Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi character Ender is a genius- a savior in his desperate world, set in the future. Ender adjusts to new and unknown territories with a strange ease. One example of this exceptional ability, or quick thinking, is revealed in one of his first encounters with null gravity. Before stepping into the battle room, unique as it adheres to null gravity, Ender recognizes a need to reorient himself. He knows that if he interacts in the battle room with the same orientation he used outside the battle room he will fail, because the battle room is unlike the corridors in which he now stands. He will need to reorient himself.

Ender is wise in this understanding, and all would be wise to consider the applicability of this theory as we interact with and engage with practices which are foreign to us. Garroutte emphatically endorses the necessity of the reorientation process in her theory of Radical Indegenism which “assumes that scholars can take philosophies of knowledge carried by indigenous people seriously (10).” Garroutte is asking anthropologists to begin their scientific task by recognizing their own orientation as an illegitimate starting point when considering other culture’s philosophies of knowledge. In other words, anthropologists must reorient themselves to the culture they enter, not only allowing for different methods of living, but allowing those methods just as much dignity as our own. One important result of this action is the unique perspective it affords indigenous peoples.

At face value, this theory appears commonplace and should expect a warm welcome from the anthropological community. After all, it caters brilliantly to a relativistic worldview. It appears to relieve the scientist from making any claims or assertions concerning morality or personal responsibility. Why hasn’t this concept been in practice for years? It seems to be the underpinning of secular cultural anthropology.

But, if one searches deeper, it is clear that Radical Indigenism is calling for more than just a relativistic acceptance of others, it requires a self criticism that Western anthropologists as a whole have yet to undertake: that of scientific inquiry/methodology, and ontology. Beneath our claims of relativism, Gourroutte suggests we still pass off indigenous philosophies of knowledge, concerning American Indians as an example, as “‘primitive’...that have been superseded by contemporary ‘factual knowledge,’” or we label these philosophies symbolic, “rather than literally truthful” (103). Gourroutte calls this a “cultural ascendancy of scientific models of inquiry” (103). In other words, beneath the claim of relativism is a modernist factual science Western anthropologists use as a standard against which they measure other philosophies of knowledge . This does not look so relativistic after all.

Priest addresses this paradox (or perhaps hypocrisy), relating the stance anthropologists claim to have taken concerning morality: “there is no basis of appeal to any ideas or values beyond those already affirmed within a society (64).” After showing anthropologists general avoidance of moral and ethical language, Priest states that in annual meetings “anthropologists selectively latch on to one particularly ethnocentric moral strand of moral thinking in our own culture, one way of conceptualizing morality and elevate it to a preeminent position” (64). This parallels to Garroutte’s portrayal of the tendency to claim relativism, while continuing to judge according to one (Western) defined cultural standard.

Garroutte’s push for the “resistance to the pressure upon indigenous scholars to participate in academic discourses that strip Native intellectual traditions of their spiritual and sacred elements,” and assertion to judge indigenous philosophies as “claims that, to one degree or another, reflect or engage the true,” are an exception to secular anthropology. Radical Indigenism is exceptional as it calls the stance of relativism to transcend even philosophies of knowledge. This transcendency is necessary as it gives voice and honor to the structures from which indigenous peoples, such as American Indians, form their identity.

Tune in soon for more on this topic :)

Ender's Game-Orson Scott Card

Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America- Eva Marie Garroutte

Christian Theology, Sin, and Anthropology-Robert Priest chapter 4 of

Anthropology and Theology: Gods, Icons, and God-talk- Walter Randolph Adams, Frank A Salamone

you know me better than I know myself

This person is able to call things out in me that I have not seen in myself. similar to culture, when one is an observer of another culture, she may notice things that members of the culture do not notice. What she notices is something the observed culture takes for granted.

[example: an observer of american culture may notice a general blandness in the American’s taste for food. Or, the strict individualism Americans hold themselves and one another to.]

I have my own culture. We all do, because not one of us has the same set of experiences. I’m used to doing things a certain way and not really questioning it. Slowly, good and bad thought processes, actions, etc. become so habitual, they are taken for granted.

[example: observers notice I move my lips when I’m not speaking, syncretizing with the person speaking to me. also, initial response from me tend to be extreme.]

The more intimate a relationship becomes, the more the people involved are able to identify behaviors, habits,... that are ‘strange’ in the other. When the behavior noticed and mentioned is especially impedimental, or especially honorable, our reaction is,

*this person knows me better than I know myself!*

Something is being named in “me” that has gone unchallenged thus far. I have not had to observe it, attempt to understand it, etc. because I did not recognize it as unusual, inappropriate, or special. Just normal. Just, me.

In order for the second party to bring it up, however, she has likely been observing and trying to understand for a while. It is not something that is normal to her.

When the naming conversation happens, it invokes a sort of breathtaking response.

*How could this person know this about me, so well, when I don’t even know what it means for myself?*

Explicating the consequential attachment does not take away from the heavy significance it carries.

Accomplishing the contrary, it dignifies the bond that has occurred.

We grow, form, soften, excel, exist, and move forward, living in complete dependence on the relationships we engage in; relationships with peers and with God.

We are dependent on those who know us better than we know ourselves,

we are dependent on the One who fully knows us...

better than we know ourselves.

alert yourself to Syncretism

The Soil and the Sun.

I attended a concert last night. I invited so many people. I asked The Record if I could write about it. It’s a local Christian band, after all.

nope nope no.

My roommate and I showed up at the apartment in Wicker Park, connected to a liquor store, where the concert was to be held, at 8:12. (worried about being late) Only a few people were there. It was the band and a few friends. They took us out to coffee, we went back, stood outside for a while... people streamed in. Someone stated playing some music around 10:30. The Soil and the Sun, the band we’d gone to see, didn’t play until around 11:30. It was one of my favorite nights so far this school year. Loads of students and drop outs from Chicago colleges, artists and environmentalists, PBR’s and pizza, dreads and cigarettes, ...

Everywhere I’m not supposed to be,

because the City is a mission field.

Am I aloud to be here? To just sit, and take it in? Turns out, half the kids who show up attend Christian colleges. Am I aloud to immerse myself in such culture without reciting the community covenant? Or at least explaining to the people sitting next to me that my college forbids me to drink alcohol?

I’m tired of being labeled a heretic for living in the world.

I read a chapter out of The Next Christendom for my Christian Though class. It was meant to be discussed in class. I entered class jittery to hear my classmates’ responses to the reading. I was especially struck by the theme throughout the text proclaiming Christianity as “infinitely translatable,” and able to be “inculturated in different societies, and each in turn contribut[ing] to the larger package of Christian beliefs.” What could be a better impetus for conversation?

Turns out, no one made a comment about this reading. No one. When I commented about the quotes above, I got no response from the class. I asked “Well, do you think that Truth exists anywhere in Christianity anymore? Or has it been altered so much over so many generations and societies that we have nothing left to grasp? If we say every other culture that practices a slightly different version of worship than we do is syncretistic, then we are necessarily saying that a true Christian lifestyle is non-existent today. right?.......because think about how much the practice of Christianity has to have been altered over the past 2,000 years.”

space

space

silence

Later in the day I walked into Anthropology in the Contemporary World. We talked about a chapter on god/God. A quote was brought up from our reading in Social and Cultural Anthropology :A Very Short Introduction, “Such faiths were once labeled syncretistic by anthropologists, who now avoid the term since all faiths, even the most orthodox forms of world religions, are historical mixtures of diverse beliefs and practices. ...it is doubtful that any world religion could ever achieve as high level of orthodoxy among its members as it might wish.” 130

This is the same issue we were discussing...er, I was discussing in Christian thought. I realized how different my thought patterns are both because I would choose to study anthropology, and because I have studied anthropology.

Obviously I’m biased as an anthro. major, but I’m worried about the views we push at Wheaton, the discussions we encourage, the actions we condemn. Christian Thought is a class required of every student, and granted not all classes are discussing the same material or content we are studying in my class, I worry that the general ideas, topics, being entertained by our students, will not be effective in preparing us to be “whole and effective Christians” in Chicago, let alone the world.

I find it extremely important to examine our judgments made on other cultural forms of worship. I find it extremely important to examine our judgments made on other practices of Christianity in the U.S. And I find it absolutely necessary to examine our judgments made on the variety of expressions of Christianity one can find on Wheaton Campus. The only other options I see are students living their entire lives ignorant of the beauty of God’s ability to relate to us as individuals and separate cultures,(which I would argue would leave them in an unhealthy and dangerous place in relation to God and others), or one day undergoing serious trauma when something forces a student to see how ‘syncretistic’ our culture is.

I don’t mind people treating me like I’m a rebel for sitting around with kids who smoke pot at a concert. In fact, I find the edgy reputation enjoyable. But I do have a problem with my peers consequently worrying about my soul because of these interactions, and being too dignified, pure, wise, and terrified to allow these experiences to form their hearts as well.

I don’t need you to agree with me. But will you at least talk about it?

down on Driscoll {this is for you, hans}

I'm taking a class called Social Research this semester, required since I'm an Anth major. We had to develop a research project proposal within the first few weeks of class, and we are spending the remainder of the semester carrying out each stage of the project while simultaneously learning the proper way to do so.

My group is studying effective responses to the growing epidemic of Pornography in the Evangelical world. Basically Porn is a huge problem, and is continuing to rise at astronomical rates with the internet, and I want to know what the Church is doing about it, and what more we should be doing about it.

So ...getting to the point. I've been researching. I found a book online by our favorite Mr. Mark Driscoll, Porn Again Christian. I've read through a lot of painful, horrifying, and provocative literature in this project. But nothing is more upsetting than inappropriate Christian responses. In his chapter on Masturbation, Driscoll posts questions that have been sent in, and his responses.

Question: My wife wants sex more than I do, what should I do?

Answer: Don’t tell your buddies or they will mock you incessantly for the rest of your life after staring at you blankly without blinking for about an hour in total silence. Do have sex with your wife as often as she likes and thank God.

I can't really imagine a more immature response. The book's supposed intention is to speak against mainstream culture in a bold, and of course provocative, way. Disgracefully, this statement strongly reinforces the mainstream's immature way of dealing with the issue. Having been prey to the actions that result from these attitudes, I felt incredibly angry when I came across this statement.

Reflecting a few days later, calmer, I understand that this jargon is pervasive in our culture. So pervasive that a Pastor can engage in it without being objected to. Discussing the issue in this language reminds me of the theory behind Systematic Racism. Basically, as long as we allow this attitude that glorifies sex as a god, the consequences including gender discrimination, sexual abuse, and inappropriate and misguided views of sexuality will persist.

blllllaaaaaaaa.jdhfoiseh.f!!!! ya know? i just need an amen...

rerun

I dreamt about a small plaid skirt

anger, shoving, laundry machine water

and the eyes of its murderer.

My dad held my hand.

I dreamt about fictional creatures

love, my own, light fur

and the hair of its murderer.

My dad held my hand.

I dreamt about soft lead drawings

unthought meaning,deep snug bunny ears

and the mind of their author.

My dad held my hand

and each time we started earlier.

and we got closer.

and the grass was dewy. and the icing pink.

onesies

Revelation through Placher

Reflecting on Chapter 1 of The Triune God by William C. Placher

I loved this piece. I felt that Placher started in a place I found myself not long ago, as I began attempting a pursuit of the knowledge of God. And as the chapter went on it spoke of various theologians of midiavil and modern thinking--Anselm Eckhart Aquinas Kierkegaard--addressing different questions I happened upon in my journey, and truths that have shed light on them. Basically, this was an articulate, intellectual, illuminating bibliographical guide to my last few years of thought. :) Who knew? I didn’t! I found that very helpful.

I identified with so many questions being asked and answers being given...but at the end of each page, just as at the end of each day, I still had the lingering question of the ANSWER. Where is it? Is anyone ever going to actually get there and talk about it? Or are we going to continue talking about what God isn’t... and how hard it is to know God... and how big God is...?

This is where Placher’s long awaited conclusion comes in. The last section of the chapter is titled “Between Idolatry and Secularity.” The quote in this section that I believe sums up the meaning and question most clearly is found in the 2nd paragraph: “Answering the questions in clear language would give us idols; abandoning them would leave us with flat secularity.” Reaching this sentence I thought I should maybe let that sit for a while. This is where I have come, after all. I have felt uneasy about making any steps forward.

thoughts I’ve had...

1. I believe God has called me to be in relationship with Godself.
2. John 16:12 remarks about the Spirit guiding us into truth. I believe that God can and does guide humans into a real and objective truth.
3. I think that part of discovering this truth and part of figuring out how to line oneself up with truth is by looking at Jesus.
4. Pray. pray. pray. ask for grace. pray. ask for mercy. pray. pray.

I loved Placher’s final remarks and I feel encouraged to read the rest of his book. Most of all, it meant a lot to hear the reality of God and a relationship between God and humankind from an intellectual.

favorite quotes from end of chapter:

“ The only way we can be connected with the utterly transcendent is if it/he/she reaches out to us in love, overcoming all the intervening levels in one act of condescension. That is what happens in Jesus Christ, and explaining the logic of how that can be led Christian theologians to the Trinity.”-p 40

“Great religious texts from many traditions keep the questions alive ...never comes to closure. Like Jacob at the Jabbok, we see God only in nights of wrestling with unknown strangers.... Nothing captured by the clear light of day. No marching forward. No answer, really, to the puzzling question of why we thought the stranger was God and felt compelled to worship. ...

Biblical texts tell us more.”-p 41

“It is different when God comes among us as an ordinary human being, in the form of a servant. Nothing tempts us to say that we now understand God, yet God has been present among us.”

-p 42

i luh you too cur line

fashion paradox

Last night my roommate and I were preparing to go to a private indie concert in a studio apartment in Wicker Park. SO trendy and hip, right? (maybe I shouldn’t go. wouldn’t want to be too ... ya know. who am i kidding? of course i’m going.) I got back from class in my BDG forest green V neck, Free People skinny jeans, and black ankle rise Converses. I thought I was ready to go. Then I thought again. I can’t wear a V neck and skinny jeans and Converses. “Why not? That’s what you wear.” says my boyfriend. Yes. yes. But it’s also what every twenty something who goes to an indie concert wears. I can’t just be another indie kid. “Then wear a dress.” Well I don’t want to stand out.
...What?

You see, I want to be edgy and cute and fit in. But I don’t just want to be another kid whose outfit was completely constructed for me by Urban Outfitters. I want to be different, but I don’t want to wear something that makes it obvious that I was thinking about trying to look different.

And this is the paradox of being a cute-enough young anthropology major making a decision about what to wear.

It’s all about the balance.

best friend

snowball Christianity

“...then quite possibly, we are getting a foretaste of the Christianity of the next generation. Or--as some worry--might it be less than a pure Christianity? Just how much have the newer churches done to fit in with the cultures in which they find themselves?”

Christianity was inculturated, absorbed, into Northwestern culture. As it is absorbed by Southern and Eastern Cultures, is it further from its origin? It’s hard to imagine what truth we could possibly have remnant of after 2,000 years. One idea: to study theologians of several cultures, and sort of “average” them out. Extract common themes, truths... revelations if you will. This reminded me of my Weber reading. The vetoed idea of “averaging” cultures in order to find some sort of object truth, or paradigm through which to see.

“...we must be able to establish the core idea from the incidentals.”

“Christianity as ‘infinitely translatable.’ Christianity became inculturated in different societies, and each in turn contributed to the larger package of Christian beliefs.”

I haven’t the first clue how to establish the “core idea from the incidentals.” Is this part of culture theory and anthropological studies? Is objectification to be sought after in order to discern truth from the culture it has been absorbed into? Is it possible to observe Christianity, faith, truth, outside of culture/practice? As fallen people in a fallen world how capable are we of experiencing, and being able to identify truth? It’s important that I ask all these questions with the common presupposition that truth exists in the form of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit.

Why did Dr. Howell tell me that of all people I am not culturally determined? What could that mean? And what could possibly convince me of that? Even my thoughts on what could convince me of this are culturally determined. I want a logical book.

The Holy Spirit MUST play a larger role in the church than has been attributed to H.S.

I’ve been thinking so much about how nothing is original. Nothing is creative. Nothing is new. You know, Ecclesiastes. We determine culture and culture determines us. Popularity of music and style and academia ebbs and flows according to the environment each individual of a generation is exposed to. What are the independent variables here? Everything depends on everything, everything is cyclical.

Not God. God is original. God is creative. God is the only one who has been, and continually is, creative.

Am I a vessel of creativity? Does the Holy Spirit creatively reveal God to each generation?

-cultural/sociological deterministic ideas disallow room for God, Holy Spirit, creativity,

-consistent interaction between God and people is necessary if truth is allowed to persist in culture today.

What is condemning my understanding of Christ and his teachings?

I think answering this question and helping others to answer this question may be more important for speaking truth, rather than attempting the great task of deconstructing another’s entire worldview in order to replace it with a “Christian worldview.” Aren’t the condemnations and lies and paradigms that hinder me towards an understanding and closer relationship with God, similar to those of Indians? The example of Karma was brought up in my reading. Is it syncretism when an Indian feels freedom from the weight of karma through Christ? Or is it Christ’s truth breaking into their worldview? Isn’t it impossible to completely deconstruct worldview? One cannot lift every experience of an individual and start them from scratch in such a way that they might understand God, Christ, or “Christian worldview” perfectly.

Americans are syncretistic too. Just because we are unable to identify our flaws, does not mean we are perfect.

-quotes from Jenkins The Next Christendom

I am too alone

I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough

to make every minute holy.

I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough

just to lie before you like a thing,

shrewd and secretive.

I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,

as it goes towards action,

and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times

when something is coming near,

I want to be with those who know secret things

or else alone.

I want to be a mirror for your whole body,

and I never want to be blind, or to be too old

to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.

I want to unfold.

I don't want to stay folded anywhere,

because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

And I want my grasp of things

true before you. I want to describe myself

like a painting that I looked at

closely for a long time,

like a saying that I finally understood,

like the pitcher I use every day,

like the face of my mother,

like a ship

that took me safely

through the wildest storm of all.

-Rainer Maria Rilke