Well, I'm trying to deliver on my promise. I gues a couple of episodes of Laguna Beach is enough to make me want to be a deep and whole person again. It makes me laugh sometimes, though, so it's worth a show now and then.
Gabe, you've really got some important stuff to say. Seriously. You tossed up that thing about selfishness, and that's dead on. I want to defend myself, and I will point out some things I think that we can admit are situationally different in our lives, but no one can defend themselves against the charge of selfishness because there is only one source. It seems to be the standard plague of humanity, but it is very obvious, even with us, or at least, with me. The thought's been rolling in my head ever since you wrote about it. How selfish am I? The thought itself shows the state I'm in. Let's just look at one another, though, circumstantially, and see if we notice some leverage behind our states of mind.
Gabe, you and I are, for all practical purposes, the same age, with the same educational background. You have three forces I can see from the get go that offer you the opportunity to be selfless or selfish in very evident ways: First, you are married. Plenty of selfish people are married, in fact, most married people are probably very selfish. It can't work very well, but our base nature wins by ease and comfort and who knows what else. You can offer insight here that I cannot. I just know, you have a blatant choice as a husband to act with only your interests in mind, and then anywhere along a gradiant towards being selfless.
To the contrary of your position, I have no significant other. I have been in two months of dating relationship time in the last eight years of my life, so I have no other person's gravity truly pulling my wants, needs, or time in any significant way.
Second, you are a father, which must be mind-blowing. To be a parent and to be selfish really are two opposite ideas. I guess I mean to be a good parent.
I, on the other hand, get scared at the thought of actually having offspring. I see other people with their children, and it terrorizes me. You can't choose your childrens' lives for them. They can be awful on their own volition, or they can be awful because you screwed them up. The closest thing I have to responsibility over another being's life is working itself at present: I am dog-sitting. That is slightly annoying. I have to stay home here with a fuzzy dog when I had originally wanted to catch another dance tonight. His well-being over my desires. And Gabe, you must live your life like that. It's shocking.
Third, you are a pastor, and so to be a good one which I just assume you are, you have to be selfless. There's no such thing as a good selfish pastor. I think I've known selfish pastors before. Your job envokes the imagery of giving up your life to spend with lesser creatures for their greater good. So you have one more part of your life where you get the up front, obvious choice of being selfish or not.
In my job, I can't say I'm selfless, but I've known other people in my work, and their level of selfishness far exceeds mine. Isn't that the best way to know you're a good person- by all the bad people around you? In the "business world", if there be such a thing, where I work against my better judgment or desire, looking out for your own interests are the main goal. Actually I feel like an outsider while working at the business level. We do things for the sake of profit, profit pays my wages, so why would I complain about how we make money? But that's the goal, despite mission statements (hideous things that infiltrated churches and our mater) and anything else. The business world seeks to endlessly make a greater profit, does it not? It's not feeding people that are hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless - business are not made doing those things. I'm off topic.
My point was, I have all these things, singleness, childlessness, independence, ect. to give me opportunity to be selfish. I am applauded by my culture for making it on my own, for taking up space and paying taxes and letting other people do the same without my interference. Well, I think I'm applauded. Maybe I'm just making that up. As I said, I can't excuse my bad choice(s), just explain the things that surround it and wonder why it isn't differnt ( me and them). I wonder who else out there feels and lives the same way. It was just good catching your words on the matter, though I think your position makes it less murky about making those choices.
Onto the other matters, which you and Kurbis have been chatting about so brazenly the last few days. You said well that we should enjoy this discussion and try not to let emotions trouble our friendships and care for each other. Your are a wise man, Gabe.
I agree most often with Kurbis in his forceful enutiation of viewing Scripture. You are right to worry that we could leave the Bible, to forsake rather than worship it, and it is good to hear someone be concerned about our connection to it. I was at the point of giving up on all things biblical actually in the last months of school. Things just didn't line up how I thought they should. I realize that's a very self-centered viewpoint, but to right now, I have no other. I was simply raised with this very exact picture of the Bible, the Word of God, the infallible, unalterable, gleaming authority that had never even fluttered in the wind. It was that first crumbling edge of that New York building when I was in Gospel of John, trying to clarify some gospel stories that seemed similar, yet different, yet too similar to be different. I felt my questions about these things were glossed over, and I suddenly realized what I had done for years to other people when they had questions about the Bible. Maybe it was just punishment for what I had done, but it was a frightening feeling of freedom, not one I wanted and not one I would return to for any reason. It was this picture of the Bible that I had, where it answered my questions like a textbook, where I studied it like a textbook (taking notes and looking for clues in words that I didn't even think about the fact that they were translated and not going to be unerringly important), and in the end, it felt like one that I had read and known and then had other things to move on to. I was arrogant enough to think I knew the Bible, and in a simple sense, I did, like a person can know algebra or all the state capitals. It's one thing to know about geography, it's another to be on a journey and feel geography beneath you.
I say all that to point out that my view of the Bible had to change, or I was going to give up ever thinking of it as important. And my view did change, a few times. I think when I stopped trying to get the Bible to save me from myself, and started seeing the lives the Bible talks about, the personality of God that didn't need the Bible but used it anyway, every screwed-up person from cover to cover living real lives, feeling real pain and joy and choosing and choosing again... I understood a little better that I couldn't dissect two words in Ecclesiastes enough times to unlock the Nostradamis-code that would solve my questions. Familiarity was not godliness. Scripture memorization wasn't the way to prove I should be chosen. I don't know, maybe none of you have really done this walk to the edge of the abyss and come back thing, if the abyss is not believing anything in the Bible anymore. Maybe you all have and I'm the only one stupid enough to try and put it into words without getting in trouble with his Bible-college classmates.
I'm going to pause here to point out a philosophical conundrum - what we call our experience. You can be Plato and talk about another real world of the ideal, or you can be Spinoza and raionalize your way to a deity without a feeling or sensation between, but I fail to see what we each have that is not, simply put, our experience. Memory, imagination, sensation, anticipation, constipation (sorry, had to try and be funny). Any way you cut it, unless you can talk with Kant about pure reason, we're running on our experiences, and experiencing our memories of experiencing, ect, ect. Some philosophers, while off the mark on some big things, really hit things well with experience as their base assumption.
And the only thing I'm going to open up at the end here is a little picture of another world happening simultaneously with ours. One of my close friends shared a small Evangelical community experience with a dozen other people in Ireland last year. She just received an e-mail outlining why one of their friends had recently joined the Catholic Church. This should make you feel liking giving each other a hug:
"There is a theology of baptism. Anglicans and Catholics have similar views, Baptists (Evangelicals, for our discussion) reject these views. There is a right answer to 'what does baptism do?, what is it for?' and the rest are pious frauds or even devilish imposters. It is not acceptable to just beignorant. The Spirit is speaking."
And things get hairier:
"The Church is the foundation of the truth, not theBible. Yes the Bible is authoritative but it isn't the final word. (anyone whocan show me where it tells us in the Bible that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, i will happily give a reward) The Church decided doctrine entirely on their own authority in the early Church. Look at Acts 15. Why did they do this? Because Christ had promised them that the Spirit would guide the Church - HIS Church in ALL truth. (John 16:13) Not just some ofthe truth - no ALL OF IT. And that the gates of hell would never prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) Sounds like Jesus is saying that the Church will never err, doesnt he? Well if the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church like Jesus said he would, then is there any reason to believe that the Church would fall into error?...There is no notion of error, the Church is infallible because it is being led by God the Holy Spirit." Just like Saul and David and the Israelites and Abraham. That's weird, oh, I just started being sarcastic. Anyway, let me know if anybody's gonna be Catholic now and save us all from our failure to be saved through a Church and not through Jesus.
Most of the e-mail outlining the problems of not being Catholic use puctuated Scriptural quotations, and then a fierce tirade against Luther as an anti-semite. It's like we're back in the 14th century and we're excommunicating each other all over again. At least we're not there yet.
I just realized I didn't really talk at all about our main subjects, per se. So, I really am emergent, wanting to tell a story, not so interested in philosophical debate, or at least, not so good at it anymore. Oh well. I just set myself up for a few shots, anyway. Please do not call and try to walk through the bridge illustration with me over the phone. I guess if you are a cute girl and you ask me to dinner afterwards, you can take me to a B'hai temple for all I care! Ha! You guys wish you knew if I was joking or not. Okay, I'm done. Catch you all later.
Gabe, you've really got some important stuff to say. Seriously. You tossed up that thing about selfishness, and that's dead on. I want to defend myself, and I will point out some things I think that we can admit are situationally different in our lives, but no one can defend themselves against the charge of selfishness because there is only one source. It seems to be the standard plague of humanity, but it is very obvious, even with us, or at least, with me. The thought's been rolling in my head ever since you wrote about it. How selfish am I? The thought itself shows the state I'm in. Let's just look at one another, though, circumstantially, and see if we notice some leverage behind our states of mind.
Gabe, you and I are, for all practical purposes, the same age, with the same educational background. You have three forces I can see from the get go that offer you the opportunity to be selfless or selfish in very evident ways: First, you are married. Plenty of selfish people are married, in fact, most married people are probably very selfish. It can't work very well, but our base nature wins by ease and comfort and who knows what else. You can offer insight here that I cannot. I just know, you have a blatant choice as a husband to act with only your interests in mind, and then anywhere along a gradiant towards being selfless.
To the contrary of your position, I have no significant other. I have been in two months of dating relationship time in the last eight years of my life, so I have no other person's gravity truly pulling my wants, needs, or time in any significant way.
Second, you are a father, which must be mind-blowing. To be a parent and to be selfish really are two opposite ideas. I guess I mean to be a good parent.
I, on the other hand, get scared at the thought of actually having offspring. I see other people with their children, and it terrorizes me. You can't choose your childrens' lives for them. They can be awful on their own volition, or they can be awful because you screwed them up. The closest thing I have to responsibility over another being's life is working itself at present: I am dog-sitting. That is slightly annoying. I have to stay home here with a fuzzy dog when I had originally wanted to catch another dance tonight. His well-being over my desires. And Gabe, you must live your life like that. It's shocking.
Third, you are a pastor, and so to be a good one which I just assume you are, you have to be selfless. There's no such thing as a good selfish pastor. I think I've known selfish pastors before. Your job envokes the imagery of giving up your life to spend with lesser creatures for their greater good. So you have one more part of your life where you get the up front, obvious choice of being selfish or not.
In my job, I can't say I'm selfless, but I've known other people in my work, and their level of selfishness far exceeds mine. Isn't that the best way to know you're a good person- by all the bad people around you? In the "business world", if there be such a thing, where I work against my better judgment or desire, looking out for your own interests are the main goal. Actually I feel like an outsider while working at the business level. We do things for the sake of profit, profit pays my wages, so why would I complain about how we make money? But that's the goal, despite mission statements (hideous things that infiltrated churches and our mater) and anything else. The business world seeks to endlessly make a greater profit, does it not? It's not feeding people that are hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless - business are not made doing those things. I'm off topic.
My point was, I have all these things, singleness, childlessness, independence, ect. to give me opportunity to be selfish. I am applauded by my culture for making it on my own, for taking up space and paying taxes and letting other people do the same without my interference. Well, I think I'm applauded. Maybe I'm just making that up. As I said, I can't excuse my bad choice(s), just explain the things that surround it and wonder why it isn't differnt ( me and them). I wonder who else out there feels and lives the same way. It was just good catching your words on the matter, though I think your position makes it less murky about making those choices.
Onto the other matters, which you and Kurbis have been chatting about so brazenly the last few days. You said well that we should enjoy this discussion and try not to let emotions trouble our friendships and care for each other. Your are a wise man, Gabe.
I agree most often with Kurbis in his forceful enutiation of viewing Scripture. You are right to worry that we could leave the Bible, to forsake rather than worship it, and it is good to hear someone be concerned about our connection to it. I was at the point of giving up on all things biblical actually in the last months of school. Things just didn't line up how I thought they should. I realize that's a very self-centered viewpoint, but to right now, I have no other. I was simply raised with this very exact picture of the Bible, the Word of God, the infallible, unalterable, gleaming authority that had never even fluttered in the wind. It was that first crumbling edge of that New York building when I was in Gospel of John, trying to clarify some gospel stories that seemed similar, yet different, yet too similar to be different. I felt my questions about these things were glossed over, and I suddenly realized what I had done for years to other people when they had questions about the Bible. Maybe it was just punishment for what I had done, but it was a frightening feeling of freedom, not one I wanted and not one I would return to for any reason. It was this picture of the Bible that I had, where it answered my questions like a textbook, where I studied it like a textbook (taking notes and looking for clues in words that I didn't even think about the fact that they were translated and not going to be unerringly important), and in the end, it felt like one that I had read and known and then had other things to move on to. I was arrogant enough to think I knew the Bible, and in a simple sense, I did, like a person can know algebra or all the state capitals. It's one thing to know about geography, it's another to be on a journey and feel geography beneath you.
I say all that to point out that my view of the Bible had to change, or I was going to give up ever thinking of it as important. And my view did change, a few times. I think when I stopped trying to get the Bible to save me from myself, and started seeing the lives the Bible talks about, the personality of God that didn't need the Bible but used it anyway, every screwed-up person from cover to cover living real lives, feeling real pain and joy and choosing and choosing again... I understood a little better that I couldn't dissect two words in Ecclesiastes enough times to unlock the Nostradamis-code that would solve my questions. Familiarity was not godliness. Scripture memorization wasn't the way to prove I should be chosen. I don't know, maybe none of you have really done this walk to the edge of the abyss and come back thing, if the abyss is not believing anything in the Bible anymore. Maybe you all have and I'm the only one stupid enough to try and put it into words without getting in trouble with his Bible-college classmates.
I'm going to pause here to point out a philosophical conundrum - what we call our experience. You can be Plato and talk about another real world of the ideal, or you can be Spinoza and raionalize your way to a deity without a feeling or sensation between, but I fail to see what we each have that is not, simply put, our experience. Memory, imagination, sensation, anticipation, constipation (sorry, had to try and be funny). Any way you cut it, unless you can talk with Kant about pure reason, we're running on our experiences, and experiencing our memories of experiencing, ect, ect. Some philosophers, while off the mark on some big things, really hit things well with experience as their base assumption.
And the only thing I'm going to open up at the end here is a little picture of another world happening simultaneously with ours. One of my close friends shared a small Evangelical community experience with a dozen other people in Ireland last year. She just received an e-mail outlining why one of their friends had recently joined the Catholic Church. This should make you feel liking giving each other a hug:
"There is a theology of baptism. Anglicans and Catholics have similar views, Baptists (Evangelicals, for our discussion) reject these views. There is a right answer to 'what does baptism do?, what is it for?' and the rest are pious frauds or even devilish imposters. It is not acceptable to just beignorant. The Spirit is speaking."
And things get hairier:
"The Church is the foundation of the truth, not theBible. Yes the Bible is authoritative but it isn't the final word. (anyone whocan show me where it tells us in the Bible that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, i will happily give a reward) The Church decided doctrine entirely on their own authority in the early Church. Look at Acts 15. Why did they do this? Because Christ had promised them that the Spirit would guide the Church - HIS Church in ALL truth. (John 16:13) Not just some ofthe truth - no ALL OF IT. And that the gates of hell would never prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) Sounds like Jesus is saying that the Church will never err, doesnt he? Well if the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church like Jesus said he would, then is there any reason to believe that the Church would fall into error?...There is no notion of error, the Church is infallible because it is being led by God the Holy Spirit." Just like Saul and David and the Israelites and Abraham. That's weird, oh, I just started being sarcastic. Anyway, let me know if anybody's gonna be Catholic now and save us all from our failure to be saved through a Church and not through Jesus.
Most of the e-mail outlining the problems of not being Catholic use puctuated Scriptural quotations, and then a fierce tirade against Luther as an anti-semite. It's like we're back in the 14th century and we're excommunicating each other all over again. At least we're not there yet.
I just realized I didn't really talk at all about our main subjects, per se. So, I really am emergent, wanting to tell a story, not so interested in philosophical debate, or at least, not so good at it anymore. Oh well. I just set myself up for a few shots, anyway. Please do not call and try to walk through the bridge illustration with me over the phone. I guess if you are a cute girl and you ask me to dinner afterwards, you can take me to a B'hai temple for all I care! Ha! You guys wish you knew if I was joking or not. Okay, I'm done. Catch you all later.
2 Comments:
Steve,
First and foremost I know of no one in this world who is more selfish then I. I work everyday to correct this deficiency in my life.
I would agree with a lot of what you said in the matters of the scripture. “I think when I stopped trying to get the Bible to save me from myself, and started seeing the lives the Bible talks about, the personality of God that didn't need the Bible but used it anyway, every screwed-up person from cover to cover living real lives, feeling real pain and joy and choosing and choosing again...” I loved this comment. I would agree whole-heartedly that people in the church misuse the Bible and try to make it an object of salvation. The Bible clearly states that it is the Holy Spirit who has come to convince and convict. One of the highlights of being in my church has been a Sr. Pastor who is not afraid to let the Word of God be a little mystical. He is an amazing expositional preacher and holds strongly to the Bible’s inerrancy, but he realizes that there is mystery in the Bible. The Bible does not claim to answer all our questions, but instead reminds us that we are looking through a glass but dimly. We are to have faith even though we cannot see the whole picture. This mystery is amazingly romantic for me. God in all his power and knowledge (which I understand from the Bible) is completely uncontained by the boxes we put him in. Getting outside of our cookie cutter view of things is the church, scripture included, would be very helpful for our churches. The fear still remains that when one begins to change a view of scripture they will take it too far. God uses far less patterns then we pull out of scripture, but that does not make scripture any less authoritative. I am not sure I am making my point. In essence I am trying to say, that there is a need for a tension in our scripture reading, but we must be careful to keep both sides in view. I admit we need to be careful not to package truth into little sellable boxes, but I am also worried when people react against the fact that the Bible contains amazing, life transforming truth.
I’m done
By
Our Family, at 11:17 AM
Well Said Gabe. Lets chat soon.
By
Folkestad, at 7:22 PM
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