Oratorical Fireworks

Choose your own adventure...?

2009-05-06T20:00:00.007-05:00

I have had a lot of patients ask me if I'm dating anybody. I've come to expect it and not really mind, as it's natural for people to be curious and want to make conversation about something other than the weather. Recently one woman asked me and I said, "No, I'm single." Usually that's follwed by "Oh, but you're so pretty!" or "oh, you'll find someone, honey!" But this lady's response has kept me thinking, even a couple months later. She asked me, "Is that by choice?" I sort of stumbled and said, "Not really..." I guess the only way that would truly be "by choice" is if I had met the love of my life and opted out, or if I decided not to date...ever. But neither of these senerios really applied, so I was forced to concede that I was single and not by choice.

Few singletons would ever utter that phrase...you won't see any "empowered" women on Oprah saying that either. It sounds so desperate...like it's pathetic to have so little control over your life. It seems like in our society "choice" is at the top of the list of critera for judging whether someone (especially a woman) is living a full and healthy life. Darn it, we can choose our husbands (or whether or not we have one), our careers, and whether or not we want to abort our babies. And some of that is good...I for one am grateful that I live in a culture that doesn't force women in to marriage, but I'm starting to realize that the glorification of choice as a means to self-improvement that is so widely proclaimed in American culture is obscuring what it means to be a disciple, and what it means to have true freedom in Christ. Consider this quote from Stanley Hauerwas:

“Long story short: we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose … is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures…. Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret.”

I feel overwhelmed by choices...where to live, where to work, what kind of nurse to be, whether I should go to grad school, who I should spend my time with, etc. This quote is freeing in some ways--we can never do all the things and be all the things and love all the people we want to, but we have to believe that God has given us our lives for a reason and He'll use us even if our lives aren't this perfect story that we had concocted in our head--whether it's about marriage, friends, career, whatever. I don't want to leave that at any simple conclusion as sometimes I do feel "adrift in the world," as my friend Joyce put it the other day. But at least it's a start.

Rachel is thinking about status updates.

2009-01-29T17:14:00.003-05:00

Lately I've noticed that I've been updating my status on Facebook (and looking at other peoples') more than what is probably healthy. And it got me thinking about status updates and the whole "microblogging" phenomenon...what are our motives for telling the world what we're up to?

a. I think that what I'm doing is cooler than what you're doing, and you should definitely give a crap. Or in the same category, I'm having a great time without you...in your face!

b. I'm just a little bit miserable and I'm hoping to hear from someone who is just a little bit miserable too...after all, misery loves company.

c. I really am looking for someone to sell my microwave to!

or...

d. I'm looking for some connectedness in a digitalized world.

Maybe we do just genuinely want to know what's going on with our friends and they want to know what is going on with us, but sometimes it can seem like a narcissistic exercise when people post things that only someone who is ridiculously infatuated with them would care about. In the words of Dr. Kelso (sorry, I'm on a 'Scrubs' kick): "Who has two thumbs and doesn't give a crap? ME!"

2009-01-26T00:35:00.003-05:00

I have been praying for clarity lately (well, begging is more like it ), and over the last week some insights have finally started to trickle in.

1. I love being single and being able to do whatever I want. My friend and I are talking about maybe doing travel nursing in a year or so and the possibilities are endless. The husband can wait till I'm 30. :)

2. I just read Suprised by Hope by NT Wright and am so refreshed. The book is basically about what true Christian hope is about. It is marketed as a "what does the Bible say about life after death?" sort of deal, but what I loved most about it was how Wright emphasized that the kingdom of God is starting now, and what we do can contribute to the cause, for lack of better wording. I guess it's a "duh" sort of realization, but it is so easy to fall into the trap of believing that your life is too small and what you do doesn't matter. I went to see Revolutionary Road last night, and Kate Winslet plays this 1950s housewife who wants to move her family to Paris because life in the suburbs is "empty and hopeless." She puts so much stake in moving to Paris becaues she thinks she'll feel more alive there, and do what she was made to do. It ends up not working out and she laments, "I was clinging to a promise that wasn't even made!" And then it occurred to me: we are living for a promise that WAS made, and for a future that has been inaugurated by the resurrection of Christ. Life is FAR from empty and hopeless. I wonder what life would be like if I could live every moment with the final resurrection and new creation in mind...

All Grown Up...Now What?

2008-09-25T01:09:00.003-05:00

So now that I'm all graduated from college and working, I get home from my job and think, "this is it? I went to school for four years to go to work, go back to my apartment, and recover from work watching long-winded news updates about long-winded political candidates?" Hmm. In college I had a routine, which was pretty much class homework, and more homework, and hanging out with people when we all felt like it. But I had a goal, and that was to do well in my classes and graduate. Now that there isn't the perpetual cloud of homework hanging over my head to fill my time and the laundry list of tests on my calander, life feels a little bit...well...directionless. And for some reason, I always feel like I have to be heading somewhere.

So I sat down to think of all the potential things I could do with myself.

a.) Get a dog and find a husband

Well, not very original. 2/3 of my graduating class has done that already. And really, I don't think getting married should be a goal in and of itself; it should be something I do because I happen to find someone who I want to share my life with.

b.) Write a book

Don't have the life experience yet. Maybe I could write about being a new nurse, but frankly I don't want to think about nursing when I'm not at work. And it would either sound idealistic and sappy or cynical and unfeeling. There's always the God memoirs, but there have been a flood of those lately. And there's the little problem of never having published anything. Moving on...

c.) Apply to seminary

Then the question becomes, "which seminary?" I'm all over the ecclesiastical map. And there's the little problem of having exactly one theology class on my transcript. I love studying theology, but I don't think I have to skill to teach it, and I don't think full-time ministry would be my cup of tea either. I would get another degree, graduate with a pile of debt and have to get...a nursing job. :)

d.) Go to graduate school for nursing

Besides the fact that I think I'm going to puke if I have to write one more care plan, this might be an option down the road. I think I would like being a family nurse practitioner...more autonomy, less hospital craziness. I could work in a clinic for the underprivilaged and feel like I was helping the community.

e.) Transfer to the OR, learn surgical nursing, and then travel around with one of those charity agencies that does surgeries in foreign countries to fix cleft palletes, etc.

Could work...except that OR jobs are hard to come by because they actually have semi-normal hours and all the senior nurses want them. And I think you actually have to PAY to go on one of those mercy-ship type things. And there's the fact that I want to see the world about as much as I want to help people...is that bad?

f.) Buy a ticket to Europe, travel around staying in youth hostals, learn another language, and we'll see if I ever come back.

Too chicken. ;)

For now it's my current option:

g.) hang around in my hometown, work a job I don't mind but don't want forever, audit a class I would rather be taking for real, hang out with friends who are mostly still in college and pretend I'm still in college, facebook fellow '08 graduates at least once a week to tell them I miss them, take a random belly-dancing class with my coworkers, watch election coverage even though it makes me want to run for the hills, and dream about doing big things...someday.

Life, man...whew!

2008-08-28T22:51:00.004-05:00

Well, it seems as though I haven't been a very good blogger this summer. It's not that there's not a lot to say, it's just that I've been too exhausted to come up with creative ways of saying it.

Let's see...I'm finally a real nurse...passed the boards, registered with the state of Michigan, blah, blah, blah. It's starting to sink in about how much responsibility I have, and it's making me wonder if I was in my right mind with I signed on for this. But I'm muddling through. Hopefully I can get a year or so of experience in and find a job that's more suited to my interests. Right now I work on an LTACH (long-term acute care) unit. I'm seeing a good variety of patients and learning a lot, but it's a pretty draining population to be dealing with. My people are often frustrated because they're in the hospital because of something that went wrong at another hospital, or they've been hospitalized for months. Most of them die or go to long-term care. I'd rather work in an outpatient cosmetic surgery center...give people boob jobs and make them happy! But I can't complain, really. I'm learning a lot and my coworkers have been really gracious and helpful. And then there's the patient or two that takes my hand and says, "Thank you for all you did for me." And right then it seems worth it.

And of course there's all my theological pondering. Lately I've been going to an Eastern Orthodox church. Long story, but I was introduced through a class that I took in January. The beauty of the divine liturgy is striking, I appreciate Eastern perspective on a lot of theological issues such as the Atonement, but I am just not convinced at this point that being Orthodox would be so much better than being Christian Reformed. I miss my CRC church a lot sometimes. So I'm "auditing" Orthodox catechism since a few of my friends are going through it as well. Weird? Yep, I know. I just keep thinking...maybe I can appreciate the beauty of Orthodoxy without actually making the leap. Maybe there's something to sticking with the communion that I was baptized into, and educated in, for that matter.

In other news, my roommate and I are moving to another apartment this weekend. I feel like this makes my college to real life transition official, for some reason.

Well, I'm going to try and get back into blogging now that I'm not studying for boards and going to EKG class. Hopefully I can post some more specific reflections on all of the above.

Sarah Coakley on Liturgy

2008-05-24T15:57:00.008-05:00

This past week, my friend Joyce and I decided to be nerds and attend the Philosophy and Liturgy conference at my (now) alma mater Calvin College. It was definitely more philosophical jargon than I'm used to, and the irony of a bunch of talking heads sitting around talking about how great embodiment was definitely wasn't lost on me. Anyway, one lecture I thought was absolutely brilliant (as well as understandable!) was Sarah Coakley's talk, "Beyond ‘Belief’: Liturgy and the Cognitive Apprehension of God." Here are my notes, even though they hardly begin to do justice to her paper.

Intro:

-part of the reason secular Europe lacks faith is because of "untaught bodies," not just "untaught minds."

-liturgy in of itself conveys a particular type of knowledge/truth

1. Religious Experience: problems with using this as a framework for knowing God

-insists on direct/unmediated perception of God

-relies on sporadic, self-authenticating experiences

-interprets mystical experiences apart from wider asetic narratives

-God= "other" to be percieved, not means of all perception.

2. Insights from feminist epistemology

-questions "perception at a distance," such as the classic philosophical examples of percieving a chair in the middle of the room.

-insists that we can't ignore the significance of personal/communal interactions

-need to take identity of embodied knower into account

-primary relationships (such as a mother and infant) are a basis for knowing later on, and provide a basis for reflection on knowing God.-->"fundamental and ongoing knowledge by aquaintance."

3. Liturgical knowledge of God

-litergy irreducibly conveys theoloical truth/intimacy with God.

-litergical practices are socially mediated, bodily enacted, and give cognitive access to pers

onal knowledge of God.

-Gregory of Nyssa: through liturgy, we train the physical senses and begin to sense as Christ senses. (the "spiritual senses" tradition, beginning with Origen)

-liturgical knowing=sensual acuity, affective longing

-engaging in liturgical practice causes us to assent to the basic beliefs of the Christian faith in different ways over time, the goal being "full integration of embodied selfhood into the life of Christ."

-liturgy engages us in trasformation toward an eschatological goal.

-eschatological moments where time stands still are moments where we remind ourselves corporately of where we are going.

I thought what she said made a lot of sense, especially the part about the problem with trying to percieve God as an "other" from a distance, and not as "the means of all perception," especially knowing what I know about psychology and human development. When babies are born, they "know" their mother by her voice, even though they are not yet self-aware and cannot consciously understand who their mother is. They become securely or insecurely attached based on whether or not their parents respond to them consistently. This forms a personality disposition that will stay with them throughout their entire lives, all before they can consciously apprehend who their parents are. I wonder if the writer of 1 Peter was subconsciously thinking about liturgy when he wrote, "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation."

I did it!

2008-05-19T17:14:00.001-05:00

College graduate...has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

I don't get art.

2008-05-14T00:03:00.004-05:00

Can someone please explain why in heaven's name this painting sold for $33.6 million?

Ridiculousness Overheard

2008-05-02T14:44:00.004-05:00

This same girl has managed to make my jaw drop two class periods in a row now:

Friday we're talking about the environment and its effect on health and the discussion moves to the ecological crisis and what we can do to. She turns around and says to me, "I don't even know why we're talking about this. God is going to destroy the earth anyway."

And today we were talking about the Reformed Worldview and how our vocation can be used in the kingdom of God:

"I don't know why we're learning this either. Advancing the kingdom of God? Come on! I mean, it's not like there's anything we can do. The world just keeps getting worse and worse and it's just heading towards total chaos..."

It was a great wake-up call to remember that people actually think like this. What depressing theology! I'm not for a "salvation by works" per se, but I still think that salvation takes work. I don't think that the new creation would be nearly as exciting if God hadn't let us take part in it. If we're made in his image to problem-solve, be creative, and glorify him with our talents, it only makes sense that he would give us some work to do, rather than tell us to hang tight until the world ends in a fiery mess.

Acedia

2008-04-19T16:37:00.004-05:00

I didn't choose to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing this year, but I did decide to go to one lecture by Kathleen Norris, author of one of my favorite books, The Cloister Walk. It was a pleasant read, but it probably wouldn't have made my favorites list if it hadn't been for one small chapter entitled "Acedia." In it, Norris quotes a 4th century desert monk named Evagrius who describes the experience of the "Noonday Demon" making time drag on endlessly and seem totally meaningless. Acedia is ultimately a life-denying condition, causing one not to care and not to feel. I bookmarked this chapter, referred to it often, and even referenced it in a post last year. I attended the lecture this morning hoping that Norris would address this spiritual condition that I have been so fascinated...and afflicted by.

To my surprise...and delight...Norris's next book is going to be all about this very topic and her lecture contained a lot of reflecting on it. In a life of routine and drudgery, the mantra of so many people is, "who cares?" "Why am I doing this? What's the point?" She quoted this poem by Phillip Larkin:

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

It's freaky if you think about it long enough. We spend our lives breathing, eating, and excreting in 24-hour cycles, and for what? I think that the "and for what" part is acedia. Where's the meaning in the monotony? There's one part of our liturgy that goes, "The faithfulness of our great Provider gives sense to our days and hope to our years." Norris suggests, and I want to tinker with this idea a little, that a liturgical approach to life is an anecdote to acedia. The two counterpoints to acedia that Norris identifies, story-telling and zeal, are both rich in the liturgical life of the church.

Storytelling, said Norris, is the most significant way in which we humans create meaning in our lives, citing a quote that humans are "hairy, story-telling bipeds." I used to beg my aunts to tell me stories about my dad, my teachers told my parents stories about me, and so on. We get together as a family and my grandpa regales us with tales of struggling through the Depression and the "Great Tornado of 1954." And every week we gather to recount the story of Christ through the Word, the Lord's Supper, and the Apostle's Creed. Whether it's around the dinner table or the alter, the liturgical act of storytelling affirms our communal identity.

Zeal, I think, is connected to eschatology and the mission of the church. Our liturgy says, "In the joy of his resurrection, and in the hope of his coming again, we offer ourselves as living sacrifices." The words "zeal" and "zealot" have pretty bad connotations, but the truth is, people can't live without a cause. As Christians, our cause should be the glory of God and the salvation of the world. With our eyes looking to the day when Christ will make all things new, we set about the task of ending injustice and inhumanity, doing our best to peel back the darkness in whatever corner we find ourselves.

I think, too, that the basic idea of liturgy helps to combat acedia and this feeling of hopelessness. In a liturgy, every act means something; it points beyond itself. We pass the peace to the people sitting around us as we're supposed to share God's peace with the people in our everyday lives. We bring monetary offerings to the front as we're supposed to sacrifice our entire lives to God. Setting my alarm and going to bed the other night, I thought about how it was a liturgical act of surrender and trust. God keeps my body functioning and the earth whirling through space even as I'm dead to the world for (preferably) eight hours. Every act in the liturgy and in our lives means something because it's part of our larger story, and part of God's.

I wish I could develop these ideas a little further, but in general I lack the time and the vocabulary. I'm sure Kathleen Norris will do a great job, though.

Is it cheaper just to let people get sick?

2008-04-10T10:55:00.002-05:00

In nursing school they ram prevention down our throats as a way of lowering sky high health care costs. But this article in the Washington Post suggests that maybe prevention isn't cheaper after all. Hmm...

Odds 'n Ends

2008-03-24T17:09:00.001-05:00

Happy (late) Easter! I came to the same conclusion this year that I have the past few years: if the Resurrection really happened, then, shit!—that’s some good news! It’s hard to explain, but for the bulk of my life I celebrated Easter like I was waiting for the tooth fairy. Nice, but no reality. It’s easy to start reading the “After the Sabbath, at dawn, on the first day of the week…” passage like “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” I have to take a step back and remind myself that the Resurrection was an actual, historical event and it represents real eschatological hope. I guess that’s obvious, but how often do we really let it sink in?

Rob Bell had a two-page spread in our local paper, the GR Press. Aside from the fact that I find this feature slightly creepy, I really enjoyed the article. As a former Mars Hill attendee, I was reminded why I have a mostly love-hate relationship with the guy. I can’t deny that my five years at Mars contributed positively to my spiritual growth. Rob has an ingenious way of tackling issues that are on peoples’ minds and hearts in a biblically, philosophically, and theologically sound way while still making the message understandable. I really think he has his finger on the current pulse of disillusionment and search for meaning. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat suffering by pulling out wimpy theodicies and he certainly doesn’t shy away from questioning God.

But from where I’m sitting, the personality cult thing just got to be too much. Mars Hill is Rob’s brainchild, and the culture of the place is what it is because of him. From the very first week it was defined by Rob-isms…calling services “gatherings” instead of services, calling the congregation “all you folks in the gray chairs,” and after we moved into the mall, making endless jokes about how cool it was that we were a church in a mall with a punk rock-looking preacher. People come just to hear Rob, and you can’t really blame them, because when he’s not there it’s pretty dull. Basically I think his strength ended up being his weakness. He is so passionate about Christ, but with his creativity and strong personality everything became too much about him. I’ll take the liturgy and the sacraments over “trampoline” Christianity and velvet Elvis ripping, thank you very much.

I don’t talk about nursing that much on this blog, mostly because I’ve got lots of real-life people to commiserate with. But the latest is that I’m done with my Leadership rotation in Outpatient OR, which translates to no longer having to scrape my car off at five in the morning during the second-snowiest winter ever in Michigan. Hooray! And I have a pretty promising interview in one OR after graduation. Wow, that was exciting. That would be why I don’t blog about nursing.

Cheers!

Jesus loves you, but his Dad thinks you're a...

2008-02-29T21:08:00.001-05:00

I stole this from Halden's blog...it's seriously funny!

22...So Far, So Good!

2008-02-25T13:48:00.006-05:00

I just turned 22 and what a birthday it was!

I got back from my Modern Theology night class to find this taped on my door (A quote from Bridget Jones, of course):

My apartment was full of lots of Bridget balloons (I think this one is the, "I like you very much, just as you are" quote):
and a table full of candles. Thanks, guys!
That weekend we headed to Chicago for my all-time favorite musical, Wicked! Laura likes to take pictures of herself while she's driving.

They couldn't open the doors fast enough! The anticipation was killing me.EEeeeeeeeeee! :)

We spent way too much money on tee-shirts. :)

And then we finished off the weekend with some great Mexican food with Laura's mom and aunt.

Seriously, what can beat Bridget and Wicked? 22 is great so far.

Saved from Clouds and Harps

2008-02-24T13:17:00.003-05:00

I checked the Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank this morning and found that Kevin Corcoran had posted a link to a Time interview with NT Wright about his new book, Suprised by Hope. After reading the interview, I can't say how excited I am to read his book. Wright talks about how we got it wrong with the view of Heaven as some sort of ethereal, disembodied existence. I don't know about you, but I find this a colossal relief. The life everlasting had never much appealed to me until somebody explained the doctrine of the Trinity and life as participation in the love of God and I found out that Heaven was real and earthy and I would still be myself.
It was kind of funny, because in his sermon this morning Jack remarked, "I don't want to just exist forever, that would be hell!" We were created to live forever...in real communion.

The Resurrection and the Life

2008-02-12T00:52:00.000-05:00

I thought this selection from Jack's sermon a couple weeks ago was particularly thought-provoking...just wanted to share. :)

You see, secularism, Christianity criticizes it not because it doesn’t sufficiently comfort people in this dying. It does it all too well. Christianity’s quarrel with this acceptance and normalizing of death is that it has turned God’s creation into a cosmic cemetery. It has simply eliminated God and accepted death, normalized it. And there is something so profound – so telling about the fact that the Prince of Peace, the Life, the Resurrection – seeing death, seeing grief – His heart shatters. He is deeply moved in spirit to see what the principalities of darkness and powers have done to God’s creation. We have a quarrel with death. Jesus is come not to ease our way into dying He has come to trample death to death.

More Sympo Thoughts

2008-01-26T20:58:00.000-05:00

John Witvliet had some great stuff to say today about liturgical theology. What I found the most helpful was a comment that he made at the end, saying that the biggest divide in worship today is not between traditional and contemporary, it's between worship that is expressive and worship that is formative. People who say we shouldn't say a prayer of confession unless we mean it, like really mean it, are people who think worship should be expressive of what we're already feeling. And then there are the folks who think that we should say the prayer of confession even when we don't feel like it so we can grow. He said in like five words what I've been trying to tell people about why I made the low-to-higher church hop. Liturgy has words for us to grow into.

The other workshop I really liked was David Rylersdaam's talk about children and the Lord's Supper. He gave a great presentation that was compelling and biblically and theologically sound. If kids are members of the covenant, why deny them participation in the Lord's Supper? I have to admit I remember being and feeling hurt and left out as the grown-ups passed the elements over my head and down the row. This is one thing the CRC should change pronto. The Eastern church has always communed children. In fact, in the case of two of my professor's children, their first solid food was Eucharist. Isn't that just beautiful?

So anyway, after coming from this workshop, I went to the closing Communion service. The Table liturgy included a Q&A session with a child and a pastor about what Communion was for and why we did it. It incidentally made me mad, because that is the format that is used during the Passover meal in the Jewish tradition. Traditionally, the youngest child asks the questions about what the meal means and then they celebrate Passover. What's the difference? In the Jewish tradition, the children, no matter how young, can participate. The CRC, however, does not commune its covenant children until they've made public profession of faith. So why act all kid-friendly when you're not going to commune most of them? This made me ornery enough that I felt that I shouldn't participate. But I don't want that to be my last word, because it really was a beautiful service. I loved the Taize chants, and there was also this really beautiful song from Ireland that brought tears to my eyes.

All in all, it was a good experience. I remembered again how much I love relating worship to the doctrine of the Trinity, I'm even more convinced that the CRC should commune kids, and I can't wait to read my Ken Bailey book. ;)

Worship Symposium: Day 1

2008-01-24T21:18:00.000-05:00

My first day at Worship Symposium started out with a seminar on lament by Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld. I don't know if it was my lack of coffee or what, but it was a little hard to follow. But from what I caught, I appreciated their insights. Calvin spent quite some time talking about the laments of vulnerable people; women who are raped and children who are abused. Sickness and disease is one thing, but the gross misuse of power just strips people of their humanity. Yup, something to lament all right. I think that they took the right tack by not trying to develop theodicies or justify why these things happen. They simply emphasized the fact that God became one of us and shared our pain and suffering. We need God to show up, and he came to us in the Incarnation, and he's coming again.

Next was the plenary by Dallas Willard. I had never heard of the guy, but apparently he's the biggest name here. He talked about weaving worship into the fabric of our lives. I was really tickled right off the bat because he emphasized the fact that we worship a triune God. I spent way too many years simply paying lip service to the Holy Trinity, but it's one of the richest doctrines in Christianity and it has huge implications for our understanding and worship of God. (For a superb treatment of this topic, see Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace by T.F. Torrence.) Part of his talk was about "praying without ceasing" and orienting ourselves to the worship of God in our everyday lives. He talked about one guy who wrote a book about trying to center himself on God minute-by-minute. I just got done reading a book about monastics on Mount Athos, so it immediately struck me that this was a very old idea. Many of the monks pray the Jesus Prayer constantly..."Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." They pray it hundreds of times a day, until it is internalized and their hearts "pray by themselves"(don't ask me how that works). We evangelicals are just beginning to get on board with some very ancient ideas.

I went to the Vespers service that was the piano and organ concert. It was one of the loveliest half-hours in recent memory. Maybe I'm just partial to the piano after playing it for so long. The combination of the two was so powerful. Hopefully I can go to their full-length concert.

I caught up with Joyce, who has been away in England, and I got to meet my blogosphere buddies Bob and Bethany in living color. I also got to eat dinner with three other people from the church I went to as a child, including my former pastor. I moved when I was ten and pretty much started all over again, so it was weird running into non-family members who know all my history. My pastor buried my dad and baptized me and my siblings, so those ties aren't easily forgotten. It is really fun to run into people after so long and compare notes. It'll be fun in Heaven when we can see our old friends, share our stories, and see how our lives affected each other.

The worship service in the FAC featured guests from China and Africa singing in their own languages. I couldn't help but get a little misty when we were singing "O, for a Thousand Tounges to Sing" in like five different languages. Maybe it was because I spent the majority of the day lamenting. That day when we all bow before God together can't come soon enough, but those eschatological snapshots we get every now and then pack a punch full of grace.

God, Glory, Love, and the Doctrine of Election

2008-01-22T22:05:00.000-05:00

EDIT: Here is another great Trinitarian quote that speaks to the issue of the Trinity and ethics.

Last semester when we were talking about the doctrine of the Trinity, our prof. encouraged us to use the Trinitarian nature of God as a starting point for all the theological concepts we deal with. He demonstrated by talking about omnipotence and gracious use of power, and after class I decided to tackle a toughy: hell! "Ok," I thought, "we have a God who is eternally love within God's self...perfect self-giving and other-recieving love. How does God pre-ordaining the damned fit into this picture? Uhh...."

One common argument given to defend double-predestination is, "If it glorifies God, it must be ok!" So, what is God's nature and how is he glorified? As I was pondering and googling, I came across a couple quotes from John Piper and Karl Barth over at Der Evangelische Theologe that illustrate how two theologians explain the relationship between God's love and God's glory:

Piper:

“God’s ultimate goal therefore is to preserve and display his inifinte and awesome greatness and worth, that is, his glory. God has many other goals in what he does. But none of them is more ultimate than this. They are all subordinate. God’s overwhelming passion is to exalt the value of his glory. To that end, he seeks to display it, to oppose those who belittle it, and to vindicate it from all contempt. It is clearly the uppermost reality in his affections. He loves his glory infinitely. This is the same as saying: he loves himself infinitely.”

Barth:

“God’s loving is an end in itself. All the purposes that are willed and achieved in Him are contained and explained in this end, and therefore in this loving in itself and as such. For this loving is itself the blessing that it communicates to the loved…Certainly in loving us God wills His own glory and our salvation. But He does not love us because He wills this. He wills it for the sake of His love. God loves in realising these purposes. But God loves because He loves; because this act is His being, His essence and His nature. He loves without and before realising these purposes. He loves to eternity. Even in realising them, He loves because He loves.”

At the risk of oversimplification, it seems like what it comes down to is:

Piper: God loves his glory!
Barth: God's love is his glory!

I guess for Piper if God has some hidden purpose for damning people from the beginning of time, it's ok if it contributes to his glory. Barth, on the other hand, sees God's glory in his perfect love and forgiveness of all people. You can probably guess that I'm more partial to the second reading. I don't know...I feel like Piper's God has to somehow protect his reputation by only electing a select few. Why wouldn't God be just as glorified if he elected everybody? Piper doesn't really define God's glory; it's sort of this terrifying, hidden thing. I think Barth's view of God's glory is rooted in where God's glory is most fully revealed: the cross of Christ. His glory is not his ability to exercise power as he pleases, but humility and perfect, self-giving love.

But what do I know...I'm not a theologian. Thoughts?

Not Again!

2008-01-21T20:05:00.001-05:00

This is the second time this sign has shown up on crummychurchsigns.com! These people need to get their act together and come to Worship Symposium.

"Lord, what must I do to be saved?"

2008-01-18T14:36:00.000-05:00

The question of religious plurality and Christian exclusivity came up in class today. We were talking about how Eastern monastics do all sorts of funny levitating things because they're holy, and apparently holy people can do those sorts of things. And I said, "Do these sorts of things happen at Buddhist monasteries too?" And my professor said probably. So we talked about Christ and other religions for the next half-hour.

It's easy to draw clear lines and say, "If someone doesn't confess Christ, they're going to hell and that's it," but I think that experience and common sense should cause us to question this. There are tens of thousands of followers of other religions who live holy, self-sacrificing lives and an embarrassing amount of professing Christians who don't (myself included, most of the time). God's not going to say,"Gee Ghandi, thanks for all the good you did for my creation, but you're heading for eternal torment anyway while all these folks that created godhatesfags.com are going to enjoy my presence forever." It's an extreme example, but extreme examples help point out what happens when you take something that doesn't seem so ridiculous at first to its logical end. Moreover, drawing the line at those who explicitly confess Christ doesn't bode so well for babies, the developmentally disable, or the mentally ill--all groups that Christ would have compassion on!

As much as Pelagius makes me shudder, I think he might have been on to something, even though he took it a bit too far. When Jesus talked about salvation, didn't he always mention doing something? He told the rich man to sell everything he had and give to the poor, and he told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. If someone doesn't believe in Christ but they're following the 2nd Greatest Commandment, shouldn't that count for something? I think it does, and the Bible does hint at it. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, some of the sheep were completely flabbergasted to hear Christ say, "What you did unto the least of these brothers of mine, you did unto me."

In the Eastern tradition, they talk about salvation as participation in the life of God. I think this concept helps when thinking about other religions, because maybe it is possible to participate in the life of God even if you aren't aware of the fullness of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Think about Forrest Gump. He played college football even though he had absolutely no clue how to play football. All he saw was the sign, "Run, Forrest, Run!" and he ran. His coaches and teammates knew the big picture and they orchestrated the plays. God is big and he's in the business of loving and redeeming his entire creation. Maybe some people don't have the whole picture, but as Romans 1 say, "God has set eternity in the hearts of men." Maybe if they follow the signs pointing to God, they're headed in the right direction. I don't think God will overlook the fact that they're helping us win the game. Maybe there will be a lot of people in Heaven like Forrest, oblivious to the fact that they're about to meet the president and downing bottle after bottle of Dr. Pepper. Indeed, maybe Christians will be even more accountable for the plays that didn't go so well.

The Inescapable Love of God: Considering Universal Salvation

2008-01-14T22:07:00.000-05:00

If you grew up in any way like me, the words “universal” and “salvation” in the same sentence automatically raise a number of red flags. “But God is just, he has to punish sin,” “we deserve hell,” “Jesus talked about hell,” and “what about the lake of fire in Revelation?” But also, if you’re anything like me, all this eternal damnation business makes you wonder: “how can a loving God send people to suffer eternal torment?” “What about people who have never heard of Christ?” “Does grace really win the day if a large percentage of humanity is lost forever?” This certainly is a sticky bunch of questions. However, some reading I have been doing lately has forced me to consider that maybe the case isn’t as open-and-shut as I had once thought. Consider the following.

Precedence in Church History

The idea of universal salvation was not a new one for the early church. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius the desert monk, and St. Isaac the Syrian were all early Christian writers and proponents of the hope of universal salvation. Origen was condemmed at the Fifth Ecumenical council, and while most people assume it implied a condemnation of his universalism, it should be noted that he held other strange and un-orthodox beliefs such as the pre-existence of souls and a pre-cosmic fall. His student, Gregory of Nyssa, abandoned Origen’s ideas about the pre-existence, but was still an outspoken universalist. Not only was his teaching never condemned, he remains a beloved saint in the Eastern Orthodox church to this day.

The Demands of Justice?

Much of the debate surrounding universalism centers on the idea that wrongdoing demands punishment and therefore eternal conscious torment is just as a punishment for our sins. Bishop Kallistos Ware outlines Origen’s analysis of punishment in his piece, “Dare we hope for the salvation of all?” The first is the retributive argument: those who have done wrong should suffer in proportion to their wrongdoing (hence the “eye-for-eye” formulation in Leviticus). But, Christ rejects this principle in the Sermon on the Mount. “If we humans are forbidden by Christ to exact retribution in this way from our fellow humans,” writes Ware, “how much more should we refrain from attributing vindictive and retributive behavior to God. It is blasphemous to assert that the Holy Trinity is vengeful.” Not to mention that eternal hell would be exacting an infinite punishment for a finite offense.

The second view of punishment is as a deterrent. The threat of hell-fire is the best way to hold us back from wrongdoing. But wouldn’t a threat of bad, but not eternal, punishment work just as well as a deterrent? In any case, it appears that the threat of eternal hell-fire is working badly as a deterrent. One only needs to read a couple testimonies from disgruntled fundamentalists to see that this teaching many times has the opposite effect!

The third view Origen outlines is the reformative understanding of punishment, which he considers the only view to be morally acceptable. It is a punishment that is not retaliatory, but remedial. Parents punish their children to change them for the better, states put criminals in prison (for the most part) to rehabilitate them. Just as a doctor may sometimes have to subject us to painful treatment and amputate a limb, so God is the physician of our souls.

Hell: a Refiner’s Fire

If we are to subscribe to this third vision of justice, how do we apply it to hell? Richard Beck, a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University suggests that hell will be us exposed to the natural consequences of our behavior, like in the parable of the prodigal son. Once we get tired of living in the muck and are completely ashamed of ourselves, we will come home, no coercion required. St. Issac the Syrian calls hell, “the scourge of love…the contrition that comes from love is the harsh torment.” God will expose us to the consequences of our behavior, but he will always give us the opportunity to repent. C.S. Lewis espoused a view similar to this in The Great Divorce and remarked that hell would be locked “from the inside.”

In my opinion, this is a much more morally coherent way of viewing hell and God’s punishment. In theology we are faced with a challenge: to reconcile a God who is eternal self-giving love within himself with a God who has been wronged and demands justice. Traditionally, Christians have reconciled these two things by comparing God to a parent. Yes, he is angry, but the more important thing is that he loves his child. However, this analogy seems to break down when we approach the subject of punishment. We instinctively know that any parent who would beat their child for stealing a candy bar should NOT be a parent, but we still think it’s ok for God to torture people FOREVER for something they did in their 80-something years on earth. Moreover, what parent could be happy if any of their children were lost forever? William Barclay makes this point in his essay, "I am a Convinced Universalist."

"If God was no more than a King or Judge, then it would be possible to speak of his triumph, if his enemies were agonizing in hell or were totally and completely obliterated and wiped out. But God is not only King and Judge, God is Father - he is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family for ever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family. The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by and in love with God."

Lost in Translation

What then, may you ask, of those pesky passages that talk about eternal punishment? There are many passages in the Bible that deserve a better treatment than what I can give them, obviously, but I do have one brief translation note. The Greek word aionios, which we translate “eternal” in fact means simply “age-long.” It could be eternity, or just the next age or two. Who knows. 

The Triumph of Grace

For as little as I know about hermeneutics, I know it is quite the balancing act. You have two passages that seem to contradict each other, so you weigh them each in context and decide which one you’re going to go with. My point is, that for as many passages that talk about God’s apparent wrath, there are a wealth of passages that speak of God’s mercy and his desire that all people be saved.

Ezekiel 33:11 As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die?
1 Timothy 2:4 [God] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
1 John 4:9-10 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
John 3:17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
John 12:32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.
1Corinthians 15:21-28 Since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive... The last enemy to be destroyed is death... so that God may be all in all.
Romans 11:32 For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
2Corinthians 5:15 Christ died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
2Corinthians 5:19 God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.
Ephesians 1:10 [God will] bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. 1John 2:2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

While it would be foolish to underestimate the reality of punishment and consequences for our sins, I think it would be even more tragic to limit the scope of God’s grace. We should hope for the salvation of all, and pray for the salvation of all. While it is true that Universalism has been the minority position throughout Christian history, it doesn't mean we should discount it. (May I remind you, dear reader, that women were one precious step above swine for most of human history according to majority opinion.) Especially as Reformed Christians, we should be examining our teachings to see if they square with the biblical witness and God's revelation in Christ. Am I completely biblically and theologically convinced that God will save everyone? No. But I wouldn’t put it past him. ;)

And I leave you with this poem by Anne Bronte:

And, oh! there lives within my heart
A hope, long nursed by me;
(And, should its cheering ray depart,
How dark my soul would be!)

That as in Adam all have died,
In Christ shall all men live;
And ever round his throne abide,
Eternal praise to give.

That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies;
And, when their dreadful doom is past,
To life and light arise.

I ask not, how remote the day,
Nor what the sinners' woe,
Before their dross is purged away;
Enough for me, to know

That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.

Universalism Links:

Could Hell be Redemptive?
The Fire and the Rose: Universalism in the Blogesphere
William Barclay: I am a Convinced Universalist
Universalism and the Bible

What's Your Theological Worldview?

2008-01-12T14:05:00.000-05:00

Geez, this Eastern Orthodoxy class has got me bouncing all over the theological map. :)

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Neo orthodox

You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth.

Neo orthodox

93%

Roman Catholic

75%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

57%

Emergent/Postmodern

54%

Reformed Evangelical

25%

Classical Liberal

25%

Modern Liberal

21%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

21%

Fundamentalist

Why am I in church, anyway?

2008-01-07T15:40:00.000-05:00

I had a conversation with my dad recently about church and liturgy that sort of caught me off-guard. The main gist of it was something like this:

Me: We celebrate the Lord's Supper every week at church because it is a proclamation of one of the central tenants of our faith.

Dad: Well, Rob is teaching us how to live out our faith.

By Rob he means Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church and the NOOMA series and by "live out" he means doing lots of social justicey things. I think that what my dad was saying without really saying it was, "what does going through a liturgy and celebrating the Lord's Supper matter if you don't care about other people?" I didn’t have a response right at that moment, but the discomfort has been percolating for a couple weeks and I realized that it comes down to one question: “What is church for?”

The way I’ve observed it during my forays into various facets of Protestentism it seems that church (services) are for one of three things:
1. Evangelization with theology-lite presentation of the gospel (“Seekers, come get coffee!”)
2. Rallying the troops (“Jeannie, why don’t you talk to us for a half-hour about the neighborhod children’s ministry?” Or worse yet: “Jesus wants you to succeed at your job and your marriage.”)
3. Proclaiming the Gospel and celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist.
4. Some combination of the above

It seems to me that my Dad and others are mostly concerned with #2…so now that we are Christians, what do we do about it? It’s not an illegitimate question; in fact it’s a good one and an important one. What I’m wondering is whether it is a question that is, ironically, distracting us from the gospel itself. Do we spend so much time talking about what we should do that we forget about what Christ has done? Do we spend more time thinking about what God wants us to do rather than who God is?

I would say yes. By the time I got to my Christian Theology class sophmore year of college I was starving for the basics. Hearing the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation articulated and receiving the Lord’s Supper every week infused my understanding of God with a richness I didn’t know was there. I’m studying Eastern Orthodoxy right now, and the other day our class took a look at the earliest description of Christian liturgy from Justin Martyr. It was very much centered around the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Eucharist. The liturgy wasn’t an evangelistic tool, it was for Christians! It wasn’t for strategizing or self-congratulations, it was for worship!

When I heard this, my remaining evangelical sensibilities sounded the alarm bells. “What good is ‘going through the motions’ if you’re not reaching other people?” First of all, as my professor pointed out, these were the people who evangelized the world…and they didn’t have “seeker services!”Second, isn’t right doctrine foundational to right practice? We forgive because we have been forgiven, we love because we have been loved, and what better reminder of that love is there than the Eucharist? Mostly, I think that Evangelicalism in America is underestimating the simple power of the Gospel. We would do well to quit with all the moralizing and start by proclaiming the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. If not, everything will just become about social justice, anti-racism, and good parenting with Christ tacked onto the end.

Zombie Kid Likes Turtles

2007-12-25T01:19:00.001-05:00

My New Year's resolution is to revive my blog, but for now, this is quite an entertaining 17 seconds.

Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama

2007-11-12T22:24:00.001-05:00

This is hilarious. People are crazy.

Rubber Duckie, you're the one...who makes my prayer time so much fun...

2007-11-05T00:03:00.000-05:00

We talked about prayer again at LOFT on Sunday, and it always seems to force me to wrestle with the deepest issues of the faith. We are supposed to pray because God has revealed himself to be faithful and trustworthy and he wants his children to come to him so he can give them what he has promised them. We all wrote down prayers that were our deepest biggest longings for the world. You know what I wrote down? "Lord, come quickly." It was the only prayer that seemed earth-shattering enough to encompass everything that so desperately needs God's healing hand.

But the thing is, people have been praying this prayer for 2000 years and Christ has yet to come back to earth and make all things new. It sort of feels like I'm being stood up; I've been seated in our booth for a while and I'm on my third Coke thinking, "is he coming or what?" So I give him a few more minutes...trying calling...try texting...still no answer. Then I start feeling a little pissed and a little embarrassed and leave thinking, "what the hell, I didn't want to go out with him anyway."

De-conversion.com has lots of stories from Christians-turned-atheists, and many of them have to do with unanswered prayer. One poster described the practice of prayer as "The Unsinkable Rubber Duckie."
"...those who believe in the paranormal will just go on believing because the belief meets a need. They are like unsinkable rubber ducks. Whenever you think you have sunk them, they just bob back up again." "If I prayed for someone to get well and they did, it was a miracle. If they didn’t, it was God’s will that they didn’t - or perhaps I didn’t have enough faith, or perhaps my own sins were getting in the way, or perhaps I wasn’t being persistent enough. There was always a good reason. 'If they win, they win. If they lose, they win!'"
His point being, I guess, that we're just buoyant with blind faith and the need to believe in something so we just keep bobbing right back up even when God doesn't show up.

I have my days where I trust in God, but the other half of the time I feel like that duckie bobbing in an ocean of hopelessness or the girl that got excited about a date only to be stood up. Even on my best days, there's always this little part of me that says, "I must be kidding myself to believe this. The universe is upheld by triune perichoretic love? There's a loving God that wants to redeem this mess?" Looking at our broken world and our fractured church, sometimes the thought of the return of Christ, or the existence of Christ , for that matter, seems like (to borrow from Shawshank), "a shitty pipe dream."

BUT, the shitty pipe was, ironically, what ended up getting Andy out of Shawshank. And the miserable bloody cross, the most paradoxical place for an all-powerful God to reveal himself, is finally what nudges me back from doubt. If Christ did indeed come to earth, humble himself, and swallow death for us, he is entirely trustworthy. And we can be assured that we are not being stood up, and that our cries and our pleas are not bobbing around uselessly, but being brought before the Father by the Incarnate Son who ever lives to pray for us. The One who bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, and felt our anguish...and is coming back. Soon.

An Odd Place for Snarkiness

2007-10-21T20:43:00.000-05:00

I'm doing research right now on pain control in end-of-life care, and my jaw dropped through the floor when I came to this paragraph:

"Part of the problem with pain control is overcoming the false dilemma between psychotropic hedonism and pharmacological Calvinism. Hedonism is the belief that pleasure is good and, in fact, very good. Calvinism is the belief that suffering is good. Puritanism is the fear that somewhere, someone is happy. Nurses and other health care providers need to ask themselves what their attitude is toward pain and the use of psychotropic agents to control pain."

I can't believe that someone would write in all seriousness, "Puritanism is the fear that somewhere, someone is happy." Am I supposed to be learning about professional nursing practice from someone who doesn't know anything about Christian doctrine and yet editorializes about "pharmacological Calvinism?" Good grief.

Who Knew Sabellianism Made Such Great Elevator Music?

2007-10-13T21:52:00.001-05:00

I'm way too easily amused.

2007-10-13T15:16:00.000-05:00

Today I woke up at 12:45 only to be rushed out the door by my roommates because the buffet at Little India ends at 2:00. I've never even tried Indian food, but today I had it for breakfast.

Last night the KE apartments went to Post Family Farm for square dancing and a hay ride. Now you would think that the square-dancing thing would be pretty chill since we're all in college, but it was just as awkward as as my 8th-grade roller skating parties. Not to mention that I really hate touching people I don't know without exam gloves on and a bottle of hand sanitizer nearby.

I'm in the midst of going especially crazy indulging my church-hopping fetish. Last week I went to a charismatic church with my roommate and tomorrow I'm going to an Orthodox church. Maybe next week I'll go to that drive-in church on Breton. Maybe I should stop going to church like a movie reviewer. But it's so much fun...

A silly but surprisingly accurate little quiz.

2007-10-04T16:03:00.000-05:00

Which theologian are you?

You scored as a Karl Barth

The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology.

Karl Barth

80%

Anselm

73%

Jürgen Moltmann

60%

John Calvin

53%

Augustine

47%

Martin Luther

47%

Friedrich Schleiermacher

40%

Paul Tillich

33%

Charles Finney

20%

Jonathan Edwards

Well I think this came out alright. But the fact that I have more in common with Finney than Edwards is rather strange.

Our Heretical Quoteboard

2007-09-29T19:25:00.000-05:00

We have this joke in my apartment that everything we talk about is either about sex or theology. And it's true most of the time, especially this one particular night.

Me (looking up from my book): Now here's one Trinitarian analogy I've never heard: the Trinity is like three bulbs making one light. Gee, that's sophisticated.

Jessie: Looks like we've got a heretical lamp over there. (Points to our five-armed lamp.) Let's see, there's Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Sophia, and....

Me: Rob Bell. Everybody worships him anyway.

Jessie: Great, our heretical lamp is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Sophia, and Rob Bell.

Me(a while later): Ok, this chapter is talking about how we can't call God Mother.

Jessie: Why can't we call God Mother?

Me: Something about how God is compared to a mother with similes, but God never self-identifies as Mother like he does Father.

Jessie: I wonder if it would change anything if we had Mother, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Me: I guess the Spirit could still be the love between the Mother and the Son...oh, GOSH! That's almost incestuous. Can you imagine the fertility cults?

Jessie: Now how does the Spirit proceed from the two of them again?

Me: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT!

Needless to say, we agreed that it was best to stick with Father.

On another random church note, Jessie and John and I went to vespers at St. Nick's orthodox church. They told us that vespers was a lot different than their Sunday morning deal and that we should come back some Sunday. It was mostly lots of chanting and incense-swinging. And they said "Lord have mercy" like a hundred times. I hope God has mercy after all that chanting...

Hiatus from my hiatus

2007-08-06T18:22:00.000-05:00

Summer has zipped by before my eyes...I've just now realized that I haven't posted anything in over a month.

I have this weird thing where the amount I write is inversely proportional to how happy I'm feeling. When things are going well, I just don't have the patience to sit down and be all deep and angsty...maybe just a few highlights.

Wicked: my aunt called me at the last minute with an extra ticket for Wicked and said, "would you like to go?" and I said, "do you even have to ask?" I was more excited than the kids in my preschool class were about going on the Bozo show. It was a splendid day, and now I'm burning a hole in the soundtrack with "Defying Gravity" and "As long as you're mine."

Camp: my job at camp last summer may have sent me directly to therapy without collecting $200, but I went back anyway. My friend and I pitched a tent and spent the week going down the zipline and pretty much doing whatever we felt like. My favorite doc was back, and we went off-roading in the golf cart and made fun of the kids who did stupid things to themselves.

Harry Potter: what else is there to say, really? The seventh book awakened my hibernating fingernail-biting habit and landed my youngest sister in my parents' bedroom with nightmares. It was long and frustrating at points, but the ending was quite satisfying. I thought that Harry really emerged as a Christ figure in the last chapter, but that could be my "all things" Kyuperness talking.

New Jersey: I leave on Thursday for a roadtrip to my friend Laura's New Jersey beach house with a couple of other girls from the nursing program. For some weird reason I really like roadtrips and am looking forward to it immensely.

And of course there were the trips to Holland State Park, ultimate frisbee games, and ice cream cones...the usual summer stuff. And now work has sent me my final full-time schedule, the booklist is posted, and tuition is due. And so it continues.

Pronouns...HUH!

2007-06-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

Recently I came across this fascinating article outlining a new proposal in the search for a gender-neutral pronoun. Ever since people decided it wasn't kosher to use "he" to mean "he or she," the problem has been a thorn in the foot of grammarians. The most common solution has been to use "they," as in, "Why would somebody steal my cab?" "Well, maybe they were late." But that just sounds like nails on a chalkboard to those of use who secretly love books like Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

So what's an anal English speaker to do? A professor of English at Johns Hopkins has suggested replacing he, she, him, her, his, and hers with "hu." Apparently this is pronounced "huh." As in, "War...HUH! What is it good for?" I can see the grammatical need, but I don't know if "hu" would ever catch on. In fact, I'm giggling just thinking about using it seriously in a sentence. Who knows, maybe I'll have to eat my words in 50 years like Old English speakers had to, after yeers of speling lyke thys (or something like that). Well then, out with the old, in with the "hu!"

Grownup?

2007-06-22T22:31:00.000-05:00

Tonight I hung out with my good friend Laura, and we decided to grab some dinner at Applebee's and then go to the 8:30 showing of "Knocked Up." (Sorry if those quotes are out of place, Bethany.) We had some time between dinner and the movie so we wandered around Meijer's and played with the appliances.

I dawned on me recently that in approximately a year I'm actually going to be a real, live on-my-own grownup, and that I might actually need things like non-stick skillets and those mini grill sandwich cooker things. And I thought to myself, "Geez, how do people get all this stuff?" And then it occurred to me that they get married and register for everything at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Man, how unfair is it that people who are getting married get all this free stuff and I'm getting unceremoniously shooed out of the nest with a hand-me-down toaster oven from my grandma?

Of course it's not just about toaster ovens. It's about not experiencing the unspoken initiation into adulthood. It seems as if only after I get married will my parents say, "Ok, now we won't look at you sideways when you pour yourself a glass of wine, and there is no way you're sitting at the kid's table at Christmas."

I'm fine with being single, and frankly kind of excited to be able to do whatever I want to after graduation. But life just feels goofy and undefined right now, and I'm wondering whether I'm destined to walk the blurry line between youth and adulthood until I tie the knot...or turn 40.

I've been tagged!

2007-06-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

Meg tagged me in one of these chain-blogger things that is giving me flashbacks to all those forwards that circulated around my 8th-grade class. There's a reason these things don't die...they're fun! Here goes:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I got a birthmark lasered off my face in 1st grade and it got me in the newspaper because it was some sort of new technology back in the early '90's. :)

2. One time I got in such a bad biking accident that I knocked my braces right off my teeth.

3. My parents live next door to an Olympic hockey player, Mike Knuble. However, I've seen him more on TV than in person.

4. In high school I was so obsessed with ER that I could rattle off the titles of 8 seasons worth of episodes and give a brief synopsis of quite a few of them.

5. One time a friend and I decided that it would be fun to climb the roof of Commons. We made it, and then had to duck when we saw a Campus Safety car in the FAC parking lot.

6. I went to Belize this past January and learned how to dance the Punta. But only after a couple panty rippers, the national drink of Belize.

7. I was on the golf team in high school. That was a near-disaster, but at least I can hit my seven-iron fairly consistently.

8. I can't stand it when people say "good" instead of "well," but sometimes I slip and do it anyway.

Ok! I tag Al, Andrea, Bethany, Deborah, Evangelicals Anonymous, Joyce, Megan, and Melanie.

Synod Part 2

2007-06-13T17:31:00.000-05:00

I watched the discussion of Third Wave Pentecostalism, and I have to say that I was really disappointed. Some advisory committee decided that they were going to adopt the majority report and the minority report was pretty much tossed out without giving the delegates a chance to vote on which one to adopt. Despite all the formalities, it was pretty obvious that they were all a little ticked off, raising several objections to the tune of, "Hey! What about the minority report?" But Synod insisted that they were only going to talk about the majority report. Never mind that the minority report was more clearly reasoned and grounded in scripture and reformed theology (at least in my opinion). They pretty much said that they were going to adopt the majority report, but that they wanted it revised for Synod 2009 because it lacked thorough explanations and scriptural support. I guess it just goes to show that when The Powers That Be can't make up their minds, you have to look at the material yourself and make up your own.

I saw in the obituaries (yes, I always read them) that one of my residents at Holland Home died on Tuesday. It was really weird to read that, because I remember giving him a shower just last week. And then I thought to myself, "Man, that was probably the last shower he ever had. I hope I did a good job." He joked with me a little and made me guess how old he was. It turns out that he was 100. And he was very proud that he had been a member at Eastern Ave. CRC every one of those 100 years. I hope that our generation can carry on the work of the denomination that he loved so much.

Synod '07

2007-06-13T09:05:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting here watching the webcast of the Synod discussing the role of women in church office. Within 30 seconds of beginning to watch it, my stomach twisted and I thought to myself, "So this is what the gay folks must feel like." To watch a bunch of middle-aged white men determine your place in the church family is just...well...ugh.

Comparing the Reformed faith with Fundamentalism

2007-06-03T17:27:00.000-05:00

I found this on Exiled Preacher's blog and thought it was helpful in articulating why, exactly, I'm not a fundamentalist.

1. Fundamentalism began as a reaction against theological Liberalism. The Reformed faith started as an attempt to bring the Catholic Church back to the doctrine and practice of Scripture.

2. Fundamentalists tend not to respect tradition. The Reformed hold to the supreme authority of Scripture, but value what the church has taught about God's truth in the past.

3. Fundamentalism has a minimalist approach to creeds and confessions of faith. The movement can be suspicious of theological scholarship. The Reformed faith is expressed in elaborate, all-embracing documents such as The Westminster Confession, The Savoy Declaration and The 1689 Baptist Confession. Typically, Calvinists have a high regard for theological study.

4. Fundamentalism makes little distinction between secondary issues and foundational gospel truth. This can make the movement unnecessarily divisive and sectarian. The Reformed insist on the essential gospel truth of God's saving grace in Christ. But they allow for liberty of conscience on adiaphora (things indifferent).

5. Fundamentalism is often stridently dispensationalist and premillenialist in its eschatology. The Reformed faith teaches covenant theology and is usually amillenialist. But some prominent Reformed theologians are postmillenialists and even premillenialists. It should be noted that Calvin said of Chilialism (premillenialism) "This fiction is too puerile to need or deserve refutation." Institutes III:XXV:5. (Sorry, John "All self-respecting Calvinists are premill" MacAthur and followers, but there it is).

6. Fundamentalsim reads the Bible in a literalistic way. Reformed expositors hold that Scripture should be interpreted in the light of the analogy of faith, taking into account grammatical, literary and contextual concerns.

7. Fundamentalism tends to be legalistic, teaching that the Christian life is largely about keeping the rules. Reformed theology has sought to develop a Biblical doctrine of sanctification that is rooted in the believer's union with Christ and the work of the Spirit. The law is a guide to right conduct, but the dynamic of the Christian life is the Spirit of Christ in the life of the believer.

8. Fundamentalism often has a very negative view of culture and the arts. Reformed teaching recognises that all human life is affected by sin, but God, in his "common grace", blesses society with many good things. These good aspects of culture and the arts are to be valued and enjoyed to the glory of God.

9. Fundamentalism is usually allied to right-wing politics. Reformed believers may be found supporting many different political parties. Reformed Christians have campaigned against slavery and racial intolerance. They have worked for a better society, including improved conditions for workers and free education and healthcare for all. The Reformed theologian, Francis Schaeffer was an early advocate of ecological concerns.

10. Fundamentalists share many important truths in common with Reformed believers such as a commitment to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture and salvation through Christ alone. Theological liberalism is a much greater danger to the church than fundamentalism. We may disagree with Fundamentalists, but we should respect and love them as fellow-Christians.

2007-05-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

"The noonday demon makes it seem as if the sun barely moves, if at all, and the day is fifty hours long."

-Desert monk Evagrius

Lately I've been trying to fight off that pesky noonday demon when I'm standing in line for the timeclock at 6:25am thinking, "what is the point?" Or thinking about my future filled with never-ending graveyard shifts and awkward blind dates wondering, "what if nobody cares?" Or peeling myself off my mattress in the morning thinking, "Not again!"

My friend's boyfriend in highschool always wore this shirt that read, "Consciousness: that annoying time between naps." It is a classic example of despair, that sense we all have from time to time that nothing we do matters.

Technically, I suppose, it should be enough that we matter to God. God created us, sustains us, and heck, God even became one of us. I know that our lives are important and I know about all of Kuyper's "every square inch" stuff (which takes on an interesting new meaning when you're wiping 95-year-old saggy butts in a nursing home). But somehow when the noonday demon shows up he always goes right for the jugular and fatigue and listlessness inevitably ensue. And now it's time to wait; wait for the haze to go away and take the stupid demon with it.

As Forrest Gump said, "That's all I have to say about that." It's been my experience that needy hypochondriacs make terrible bloggers and even more terrible friends. But I'm determined to say it like it is, and sometimes that's how it is.

Chasers war on everything: Evangelicals

2007-05-22T17:43:00.001-05:00

I got a good laugh from this little fella. :-)

Summer Reading

2007-05-19T14:28:00.001-05:00

Now that I have a little more time on my hands and I can read whatever I want, I'm looking for some book suggestions. The Confessions and the Institutes are already on the list, but I'm also really itching for a novel that's going to suck me in and change my life. ;)

But really, anything is up for grabs. Here's your chance to indoctrinate me!

Ding-dong, the fundy's dead!

2007-05-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

Jerry Falwell died today of some sort of heart something. After I saw this pop up on Yahoo! news, I sat biting my thumbnail and thinking to myself, "Should I write something snarky about his double chin, how he thought Tinky Winky was gay and destroying the minds of young children, or how he blamed feminists and homosexuals for 9/11?"

But you know, despite his terribly misguided mindset, he thought he was doing the right thing. And honestly, I shudder to think about how many times a day I say something ridiculous despite my best intentions. At the end of the day, all of us, whether we're fundamentalist tele-evangelists or intellectual Calvinites, know about as much about God as an ant knows about the internet.

All I know is that I'm thankful for the grace that is bigger than the pitiful person I am and the best-laid plans that seem to always blow up in my face. Falwell is probably thinking the same thing right about now.

Life in Christ

2007-05-14T22:42:00.000-05:00

My sermon notes this week included a reference to Lydia, a dealer of purple cloth whom Paul preached to in Acts 16:14-15. "The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, 'If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.' And she prevailed upon us."

Jack highlighted how the gospel evoked in her a sense of hospitality and openness to others. Hospitality is decentralizing...it insists that we push our own agendas aside for the sake of others. Jack mentioned that "participation in hospitality is participation in the life of God" and this got me thinking about God's life in the Trinity. In Engaging God's World Plantinga writes,

"At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, defer to one another. Each person, so to speak, makes room for the other two. I know it sounds a little strange, but we might almost say that the persons within God show each other divine hospitality. "

He then goes on to talk about how hospitality means that we "make room for others and then help them flourish in the room you have made."

And then I started thinking to myself, "Man, how many interpersonal problems stem from a lack of hospitality?" I can't make room for some peoples' crazy personalities. I'm envious of some people and I don't want to make room for them and help them flourish because I want what they have. I'm stinking self-absorbed because I think there is only room for me, me, me. I don't want to make room again for people who have hurt me. And on and on.

And isn't one of the biggest barriers to a relationship with God a lack of hospitality and perpetual self-absorption? The idea of being forever self-giving and exalting others is so far removed from our propencity toward selfishmess. And yet, the book of Acts tells us that a little taste of grace should evoke in us the desire to participate in the life and love of God, making room for others as God makes room for us.

In Phillipians 2 Paul says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others as better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." And then the next section goes on to talk about Christ's humility. This sounds really funny, but I've always been kind of fuzzy on what humility actually entails. Not bragging? Not showing off? Shrugging off compliments? But a couple of months ago I went to mass with my roommate and her friend just because I had never been to a Catholic mass, and the priest at IHM finally gave me a working definition: "Humility is using your gifts to help others."

So if hospitality is making room for others and humility is how we use our gifts to help them flourish, these two go hand-in-hand. I almost feel like we should smush them together: hospimility. :) Or not.

Which brings me to my obligatory "ah-ha!" moment. "Ooohhhh! I get it! That's why Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and said, 'Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.' Because what we do for others reflects our participation in the life of God because God is communal within God's self!" Well that only took me 21 years to figure out.

And I leave you with St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

"Prayer of the Trinity" by NT Wright

2007-05-11T19:25:00.000-05:00

I found this on CICW:

Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:

Set up your kingdom in our midst.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Holy Spirit, breath of the living God:

Renew me and all the world.

You learn something new every day

2007-05-11T15:46:00.000-05:00

As is customary during finals week, I am planted on the couch with two empty popcorn bowls, three empty pop cans, one can of pop I'm still drinking, and a bag of dark chocolate kisses. I'm mowing down the kisses like it's my last day alive, but I think the fact that dark chocolate has so many cancer-fighting anti-oxidents justifies it slightly. Plus it's finals week.

I was all excited because I bought myself chocolate ice cream too, but our freezer is not freezing, and thus it is soupy. The maintenence man came and infomed me that the empty pop boxes we had stacked next to the fridge were preventing the warm air from escaping from behind the fridge so it wasn't able to cool down. So I removed the boxes and the fridge is feeling cooler already. But this makes me wonder, what other silly things don't I know about everyday appliances? It's not too much of a hassle in the Calvin apartments where you just put a request in on Knightvision, but what about the real world? Am I going to have to pay some guy with a plumber butt $60 every time I don't know something stupid like that? Graduation is looking scarier every day, and it's not just 'cause of the fridge.

Singing the Song

2007-05-06T19:59:00.000-05:00

Sunday is always a good blogging day because church gives me so much to digest. This morning Jack preached on a passage from Acts (11...I think), but I will just straight up admit that I don't remember how it connected to the last bit of his sermon, which is about all that I remembered, probably because it was a story. Jack told a story about how he and his wife were walking around San Francisco and they came across a rather large, unattractive woman with a boom box. She then pushed the button and began to sing a song so beautiful that people were throwing $20s at her and one man even whispered to Jack's wife, "This is a gift." As she sang, he said, she began to appear more beautiful, leading Jack to conclude, "The song transforms the singer."

The song transforms the singer. This was especially encouraging to me because I have always felt subconsciously that I had to have a good voice in order to sing the song. I have this "all or nothing" mentality that leads me to think that I have to have all my ducks in a row in order to even begin to think about singing. Doubts? Insecurities? Inferiority complex? Selfish desires? All reasons to sit this one out and let those super-spiritual people who really know the song belt it out.

But you know, hearing that God gives broken people this song to sing in order that they may be transformed just makes me want to cry with thankfulness. And if we sing this song with all we've got, how can it not transform us? People whose hearts sing, "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again" live in the hope of the resurrected Lord and the anticipation of the day when we will finally see God's face.

Every so often I will take home the liturgy and tape a song on the wall. I think that "I am the Bread of Life" sums up our song well.

I am the bread of life;
they who come to me shall not hunger;
they who believe in me shall not thirst.
No one can come to me
unless the Father draws them.

(Refrain)
And I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up on the last day.

The bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world,
and they who eat of this bread,
they shall live forever,
they shall live forever!

I am the resurrection;
I am the life.
They who believe in me,
even if they die,
they shall live forever.

Yes, Lord, we believe
that you are the Christ,
the Son of God
who has come into the world.

Seriously, how is this not so exciting that you want to pee your pants? Ok, I'm done. ;)

Question of the Day

2007-05-05T20:02:00.000-05:00

So...I have decided to revive my blogspot and give it a little test run. I'm going to keep my Xanga up and running for now, but we'll see what happens.

I was just having a discussion with my roommates about how we should go about sharing the gospel. I'm a little skeptical of Billy Graham-type crusades where everybody is in an emotional uproar, they go up to the front to get "saved," and then the next day two-thirds of them are back to the same ol' same ol'. But maybe I'm just jaded. My roommates said "Well, if God uses it to save people, then who cares?" That is pretty darn hard to argue with. If I had my way, we would drag everybody to catechism class to be seduced by our sexy Reformed theology, but that isn't exactly practical. So what do you think? Am I being an intellectual snob? Should we suck it up and embrace a pragmatic approach to evangelism?

Here's a quote from The Scandel of the Evangelical Mind that pretty much summarizes my concern:

"The form of revivalism that eventually came to prevail as the dominant mode of evangelical church life was activistic, immediatistic, and individualistic. As such, it was able to mobilize great numbers for the cause of Christ. But also as such-with its scorn for tradition, its concentration on individual competence, its distrust of mediated knowledge-American revivalism did much to hamstring the life of the mind."

Hello, Blogspot

2006-12-13T13:27:00.000-05:00

So, I decided to make a blogspot.

Props for anyone who knows where the title came from. :)

Just for a little glimpse into Rachel-dom, here's my mental health clinical group. Yes, we're the nursing students, not the patients.