xphiles

Gapingshirt!

OK, so it's not a substantive blog post.  But here's a picture of my Gapingvoid t-shirt!  Quite cool.  The design is by Hugh Macleod.  Spendy, yes.  But fun.  Click "continue reading" to see a close-up.

"The market for something to believe in is infinite."  We as humans are intrinsically starving for something to believe.  And yet in the West, the Church, which can share the single greatest Person to believe in, is in numerical decline.  Some say this has a lot to do with the post-modern, atheistic culture of the west.  That's the easy answer; blame the "market."  I say it has a lot to do with the Church in the west.  But it's easy to complain & critique, harder to go out and love the people we (the Church) have already convinced that we're thoroughly worthy of being ignored at best.

Picture taken on our back deck.

Law vs. Legalism

Found this great post by Alan Hartung (yeah, I'm about a month late in commenting on it...).  In my perspective, a lot of folks thinking and talking in the "emergent" conversation (in North America, at least, but that is only a limited subset of the movement!) have roots in the evangelical tradition and are trying to move beyond/ out of the definite legalistic tendencies in that tradition.  In Alan's post, the question gets raised: once you take out the legalistic structures that encourage conformity to particular behaviors that define "holy" or "righteous," what guides the kind of transformed life of kingdom holiness that emergent folks hunger and thirst for?

Not Actually Blogging about Episode Three...

... but for me, the most powerful moment of the movie, indeed of the whole prequel trilogy, was Yoda's statement, "Failed have I."  (Or words to that effect.  Only seen it once.)  Sure, it has immediate application.  He didn't hand Palpatine's posterior to him.

But the Sith couldn't have pulled it off if the Jedi hadn't been asleep at the switch, no?

And when Yoda said that, I thought back to Ep I: "Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to... suffering."  And all the detachment stuff for Jedi in Ep II & III.  So, now I am conceding that it is beyond lame to make hypothetical what-ifs about a movie world.  But I have also conceded that I can be quite lame.  So maybe if the Jedi hadn't been so unwilling to enter into suffering with the Republic they were supposed to love, they wouldn't have failed.

</fanboy lameness.>

Bearing

More thoughts from The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles...

Early on, the authors spend some time expounding classical OT & NT verses about blessing those who curse you, loving enemies, etc.  Now, in an early Christian document, I for one would expect the application to be made to persecutors, those who revile the Church, etc.

But catch how they end the section: "Bear, therefore, with one another, ye servants and ye sons of God."  Ouch.  Even those they can confidently name as servants and heirs of God, they know will have conflicts, quarrels, and the need to forgive one another, bear with one another, etc.  Even within the Christian community, we find those we are tempted to call enemies.  We injure each other. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same, no?