Here is a list of ideas for Tuesday:
1. I was never one of those people who felt hurt by the church despite the fact that I saw the church and all of its mistakes and failures, but about a year ago when Rob Bell published Love Wins I finally understood why people hate Christianity. I have never felt more unloved and flat out hated by people who I considered brothers and sisters in Christ than after the publication of that book. I felt like all the ideas and creativity that was surging through me just stopped, and it wasn't God's fault it was my own. I shut it off because I was afraid that if I expressed all of the ideas that I had that people in the church would turn against me. This blog has helped me to express those ideas again.
2. Because of our limited understanding if we were to see God he would appear to us to always be in a state of growth. If you imagine infinity there is always a point in your head which is the edge of your imagination and if you imagine yourself approach that point then you will find yourself getting ever closer to infinity while meanwhile the thing which rest on the horizon never changes, but if you imagine yourself arriving at that point it would be much like Truman in the Truman show arriving at a wall in the middle of the ocean. The one that would be different between the Truman show and true infinity is that once we arrived at that wall which we created in our heads it would then expand further out until it got back to it's furthest point again and the process would continue. Now if we imagine ourselves arriving at infinity an infinite amount of times our mind allows the equation to go on forever and basically blurs everything in between. I used to play this video game for the Atari where you could just drive for as long as you wanted as long as you didn't crash, and day would turn to night and back to sunrise over and over and sometimes you would arrive at a city and sometimes you would arrive at a vast open dessert, but the game could possibly go on forever. After about 2 hours it was incredibly boring and limited, and God is not. So if we were to embark on this imaginary journey to the edge of infinity we would find ourselves experiencing a newer and greater idea of God every time that we arrive at the limit of our understanding. This would be like Truman arriving at the wall only to have it expand into a completely different world where up was down, down was up and pigs could shoot fire. No one would say "ah yes, Truman's world remains steady and unchanging," even though the fact that it is constant and infinite makes it steady and unchanging because it is in a steady and unchanging state of growth.
3. We are only creative because we have a creator. The only reason why we are capable of art and expression is because the one who created everything lives in us and has breathed His breath of life in us. Expressions of creativity are amazing to us because they reveal to us that there must be a creator bigger than humanity at large.
4. God's will for us is utterly simple and it's a product of the fall that we do not ever fully realize it's simplicity. In attempts to grasp at its simplicity we always arrive at complexity but when we attempt to love others to the best of our abilities at all times no matter how limited our understanding may be we find ourselves understanding God and how simple is will is more than any study could offer.
5. Blasphemy is atrophy of the body of Christ. Christianity becomes blasphemy at the point that it stifles and restricts believers from pursuing Christ and doing His will. When we discuss Christianity and debate beliefs it becomes unproductive once we arrive at a crisis of faith that stops us from doing the things God has called us to do. Through my Christian education and my conversations with friends I've gotten to this point multiple times where I felt like I simply didn't know the answer and my fear of choosing the wrong thing stopped me from doing anything, or rather my inability to find an answer equipped me to pursue my laziness. It is easy to use Christianity as an excuse to not actually be a Christian. It is easy to study the scripture about tithing to the point that you justify never tithing. It is easy study scripture about evangelism to the point that you justify never evangelizing. When you do such you commit blasphemy. It speak against the truth of Christ which in itself is faith, an active moving faith that changes the world. When we study scripture to a point of lethargy we portray a Christ who did nothing for us but read the Torah.
1. I was never one of those people who felt hurt by the church despite the fact that I saw the church and all of its mistakes and failures, but about a year ago when Rob Bell published Love Wins I finally understood why people hate Christianity. I have never felt more unloved and flat out hated by people who I considered brothers and sisters in Christ than after the publication of that book. I felt like all the ideas and creativity that was surging through me just stopped, and it wasn't God's fault it was my own. I shut it off because I was afraid that if I expressed all of the ideas that I had that people in the church would turn against me. This blog has helped me to express those ideas again.
2. Because of our limited understanding if we were to see God he would appear to us to always be in a state of growth. If you imagine infinity there is always a point in your head which is the edge of your imagination and if you imagine yourself approach that point then you will find yourself getting ever closer to infinity while meanwhile the thing which rest on the horizon never changes, but if you imagine yourself arriving at that point it would be much like Truman in the Truman show arriving at a wall in the middle of the ocean. The one that would be different between the Truman show and true infinity is that once we arrived at that wall which we created in our heads it would then expand further out until it got back to it's furthest point again and the process would continue. Now if we imagine ourselves arriving at infinity an infinite amount of times our mind allows the equation to go on forever and basically blurs everything in between. I used to play this video game for the Atari where you could just drive for as long as you wanted as long as you didn't crash, and day would turn to night and back to sunrise over and over and sometimes you would arrive at a city and sometimes you would arrive at a vast open dessert, but the game could possibly go on forever. After about 2 hours it was incredibly boring and limited, and God is not. So if we were to embark on this imaginary journey to the edge of infinity we would find ourselves experiencing a newer and greater idea of God every time that we arrive at the limit of our understanding. This would be like Truman arriving at the wall only to have it expand into a completely different world where up was down, down was up and pigs could shoot fire. No one would say "ah yes, Truman's world remains steady and unchanging," even though the fact that it is constant and infinite makes it steady and unchanging because it is in a steady and unchanging state of growth.
3. We are only creative because we have a creator. The only reason why we are capable of art and expression is because the one who created everything lives in us and has breathed His breath of life in us. Expressions of creativity are amazing to us because they reveal to us that there must be a creator bigger than humanity at large.
4. God's will for us is utterly simple and it's a product of the fall that we do not ever fully realize it's simplicity. In attempts to grasp at its simplicity we always arrive at complexity but when we attempt to love others to the best of our abilities at all times no matter how limited our understanding may be we find ourselves understanding God and how simple is will is more than any study could offer.
5. Blasphemy is atrophy of the body of Christ. Christianity becomes blasphemy at the point that it stifles and restricts believers from pursuing Christ and doing His will. When we discuss Christianity and debate beliefs it becomes unproductive once we arrive at a crisis of faith that stops us from doing the things God has called us to do. Through my Christian education and my conversations with friends I've gotten to this point multiple times where I felt like I simply didn't know the answer and my fear of choosing the wrong thing stopped me from doing anything, or rather my inability to find an answer equipped me to pursue my laziness. It is easy to use Christianity as an excuse to not actually be a Christian. It is easy to study the scripture about tithing to the point that you justify never tithing. It is easy study scripture about evangelism to the point that you justify never evangelizing. When you do such you commit blasphemy. It speak against the truth of Christ which in itself is faith, an active moving faith that changes the world. When we study scripture to a point of lethargy we portray a Christ who did nothing for us but read the Torah.
I like the Truman show analogy. Especially since upon reaching the wall his world did expand into something completely different. I mean up wasn't down and down wasn't up, but to him getting beyond the wall would've been almost just as radical of a change.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I love movies.
I like these lists a lot. I like how you are living out Christ and pursuing him honestly, making him and his bride the center of everything. I also like your analogy on infinity. It actually agrees with what most physicists theorize about perception and black holes, that as you enter the event horizon someone looking at you entering it would see your atoms dissipate but to you, you would never reach it. It is also like Aslan getting bigger every time you see him.
ReplyDeleteI miss you and am looking forward to seeing you again... hopefully in May. Keep doing this.
DKL! Sorry that your most recent trial didn't work out haha. But yeah, I think Truman Show teaches us so much about God, it's weird and it's not always about God so much as how we perceive him. So many of us think of God as the non-participant observer but Truman gets to this point where he starts to see the ways this non-participant observer was actually participating the whole time. Love it.
ReplyDeleteMatthew, which matthew are you?! also, there's nothing better than astrophysics to help dumb down the ideas of God, amIright?! :-)
Its mattasaur :)
ReplyDelete