Tuesday 27 June 2006 at 2:50 pm
The reports are all over the place, but I thought I'd
link Fox news just for the fun of it. ;)
I first read it in the Sacbee this AM:
(registration reqd)
I had a couple of thoughts:
1. It interests me how some "conservative" groups still insist there cannot be any genetic or physiological links. Arminians abound! :)
2. Yesterday I heard
a piece on NPR on Autism seeking acceptance rather than cure:
Similar stories have been around in the deaf community as well. This is very interesting to me and has ties to identity, culture, theological anthropology, etc.
I remember first hearing how there is pressure at times in the deaf community resisting operations that would give hearing to the deaf as a violation of their culture. Now autism. Fascinating. pvk
Tuesday 27 June 2006 at 1:32 pm
I love Ken Bailey's stuff. If I've got something from him I look at it first. His latest book "Jacob and the Prodigal" did not disappoint. Here are some of his thoughts on Jesus' background that I found helpful.
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Monday 26 June 2006 at 4:10 pm
I first saw the sitcom on an airplane and I was captivated by the concept. You can read a brief synopsis upon which the show is based from the NBC website. It’s about a rotten guy who tries to turn his life around. (The show, although on TV isn’t really appropriate for kids in my opinion.) Earl has a list of all the wrong things he’s done, and in the hope of bringing himself good karma he’s working to make up for them. Every episode he knocks one off and rights some wrong in his past or present.
One thing I noted right away, although they give the impression that the list is long, it fits on one side of a sheet of notebook paper. Earl is a likable, genuine, generous, good hearted guy. I do wonder though, how long will Earl last? When will his system securing for himself good things through Karma frustrate or fail him? Is life on the micro level really this balanced? My understanding of Karma from eastern religions is that they assert the necessity of future lives to find the balance. Earl just has 18 minutes after commercials to work his efforts.
I look at Earl’s list, then I think about having a fight with my wife. If half way into the fight I realize that I AM to blame (I hate it when that happens), the next strategy then becomes how can I make up for what I’ve done. It’s happened plenty of times (I’ve been married 18 years now) but each time I’m struck with the realization of how hard it is to undo something I’ve failed at. The damage is done. Lottery winning Earl does sometimes go to heroic lengths to fix things, but then again he’s a lottery winner in his sitcom world.
This week in church we start working into the “deliverance” section of the Heidelberg Catechism with Lord’s Day 5. Someone to address the mess. As much as I like Earl, his list just doesn’t cut it for me.
Friday 23 June 2006 at 7:12 pm
Some other great quotes from "Soul Searching" by Christian Smith
Nearly all U.S. teens seem to have adopted a posture of civility and a careful and ambiguous inclusiveness when discussing religion with possible "others," especially in public.... Their natural tendency is to studiously avoid personal expressions of religious specificity, seemingly in deference to normative rules governing the public-private divide in our culture. ...
Part of this careful civility seems rooted in the high premium that most teenagers place on being open to a vast variety of ideas, people, and experiences. It is normative in contemporary U.S. youth culture both to be open to if not accepting of nearly everything that comes along, and not to be "too" committed to or earnest about anything absolute or contentious. This itself is another expression of anti-judgmentalism derived from the American individualism that adolescents have thoroughly assimilated, as described above. Individuals can decide only for themselves and so cannot strongly evaluate or judge anyone or anything other. Part of obeying that general rule is being careful not to speak any potentially upsetting or exclusive things, particularly about religion. It is also obvious that, in all of this, public schools have served as an effective training ground for teaching teenagers to be civil, inclusive, and nonoffensive when it comes to faith and spiritual matters. In addition to the general official promulgation of tolerance and acceptance of all cultural difference that normally begins in kindergarten, most teenagers report that their school teachers avoid discussing religion like the plague and that their school friends largely act as if religion is not part of anybody's life.
P. 160
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Thursday 22 June 2006 at 3:25 pm
Christian Smith is a sociologist who studies religion and youth. In his recent book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers he describes America’s youth across the lines of traditional religion (he interviewed American teens from nearly every major religious tradition) as being adherents to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The creed of this religion is as follows:
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Tuesday 20 June 2006 at 10:09 pm
People are just as duplicitous with consequence as we are with punishment. We love and expect our world of cause and effect. When we pick up the remote we expect the TV to switch on and go to the channel we select. We expect our car to start, the microwave to work and our computer not to crash. When these things don’t happen our response is somewhere between frustration and anger. We are real agents in this world and we expect to have the world respond to our wills accordingly and consistently.
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Monday 19 June 2006 at 9:16 pm
People are funny when it comes to punishment. Everyone will agree that "bad
people" deserve punishment. Things get squirrelly when you ask them to list the
"bad people". Should tax cheats be punished? "Yes". Should your friend who
cheated on his taxes be punished? "Well, did he really cheat? How do you know he
cheated? Did he do it in a way different from everyone else...?" When caught
speeding, everyone hopes for a warning even though most would agree that highway
safety requires that speeders be punished. They, of course, were one of the
"safe" speeders as opposed to the dangerous ones...
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Friday 09 June 2006 at 1:44 pm
Glory is what we are after. Whatever else glory is, it is not just more of what we already have or the perfection of what we already have. Do we suppose that the Christian life is simply our human, biological, intellectual, moral life developed and raised a few degrees above the common stock? Do we think that faith in Jesus is a kind of mechanism, like a car jack, that we use to lever ourselves up to a higher plane where we have access to God?
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Wednesday 07 June 2006 at 6:25 pm
I went with a group of pastors as part of a peer learning group to visit Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York last weekend. I'll be putting together a longer report but this
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