Category: <span>Christianity</span>

Published September 18, 2007 by

Hermenutics – Post of the Day

antonia1.jpgI remember back several years ago I had the opportunity to sit in on a lecture about Hermeneutics at Melbourne University – I think it was through my Texts and Traditions class – it was fascinating, and I had every intention to one day go back and do some more investigating.

Josh from Love in the Key of Longbrake (which I follow to keep an eye on some fun photography) has written a post about a moment that hit him during a class on hermenutics, I think that you should go and read it. Post of the day worth.

Christianity Culture Post of the Day

Published September 13, 2007 by

And she does it again

Blogging Christianity Culture

Published September 8, 2007 by

Continuum has a double u, like vacuum

230.jpgI was thinking this evening about hindsight. We often talk about ‘learning from past mistakes’ but don’t really treat them as anything other than a mistake that something good has come out of.

Three examples of this stand out to me:

In my penultimate-final year of school I picked Physics as a subjects. This was purely a pride/self thing in that I nearly failed the year before and had to prove to myself that I was capable. I’m sure I’ve told the story before. Happily for my pride I did reasonably, but wisely and gladly gave it up in favor of Biology the next year.  Here’s the thing. If I hadn’t done Physics in year 11, I would’ve found Chemistry in year 12 much more difficult, instead I really enjoyed myself.

My job at a bookstore was a sore point for a good five months (that is under exaggerating) and yet it taught me not to be such a wuss when it comes to phones and to appreciate the kind of job that I have now. I really do have a fantastic part time job and my less-hate of phones is a better thing for it.

A year at uni starting out in multimedia told me exactly the avenue of career I didn’t want to wind up in, but I picked up some useful concepts along the way such as User Centered Design and the guts of what it’s like to be in uni and what’s required. Now I am in a course where I love what I’m doing.

These things all sucked (mostly) at the time but I’m pretty confident God whacked me there midst my pride/general stupid ideas/luck of the draw situations.

Not to take the prosperity angle, but more for my pessimistic self to look at these things not as mistakes that God miraculously flipped into perfectly cooked life situations, but as a continuation of life. Not to be morbid or… fatalist (I’m sure that’s not quite the word I’m looking for) about it either.

Face the fact, reality serves up more unresolved mistakes than hindsight opportunities.

There’s something that really disturbs me when we put things down to a destination. Be it ‘when I grow up’, ‘when I have the career’ or even, ‘when I go to heaven’.

It can’t be about arriving.

I don’t know what heaven will be like. Place, state of mind, new earth, theory a, b, c… z. I can’t claim to even get close. I kind of understand once we hit (classic) “heaven” we are content forever with God because we are ‘with him’, but I don’t understand that God is okay with mindless, yet very content zombies… and hey – isn’t God already with us?

It’s ridiculous blaming life and just chugging through life as ‘fill in time’ before we get to heaven.

Plenty of wacko heaven theories out there, rethink (or think) the whole thing please. I’m sure I’ve done a disaster in explaining my head, but it’s not about ‘meantime’.  What does a continuum look like? Where did God start? Where does God end? I don’t know if he did or does.

Cheers to Yellowcard for sharing our common lament,

And I’m sure the view from heaven
Beats the hell out of mine here
And if we all believe in heaven
Maybe we’ll make it through one more year
I hope that all is well in heaven
Cuz it’s all shot to hell down here…

We are selfish beings in our expectation of ‘now’ – even in our expectation of ‘next’.

Christianity

Published September 4, 2007 by

Go elsewhere

Dear Readers,

While I blog from the comfort of my future lounge room (how cool is that!) slightly less frequently than I’d like, wander yourselves over and check out Amateur Theology.

While you’re wandering, add Amateur Theology to your feed-reader. If you don’t know what a feed reader is, wander yourself over to Google.com and type in Google Reader and follow the prompts to get yourself a log in – you don’t have to know how it works unless your brain is addled like mine was when I was younger. Now I know I don’t and can’t know everything and have adopted a sense of laziness past a certain hour. While you’re there, sign yourself up to Gmail if you are still using Hotmail, because we all know it is about three hundred zquillion times better, then return to Amateur Theology (or here if you can’t remember what the link is), then go to Amateur Theology.

Subscribe yourself to the feed. Think about submitting something to the administrator for it to be published if you are so inclined (and for you to get a nice happy easy link to something that will one day be HUGER than here… maybe – we can only hope – thus making you famous). If you don’t think you are of the whallop* then think about the post/s there and reply with a well thought out comment.

After this, spread the word via your own amazing (I’m sure) blogs, email and every other viral marketing splug you can conjure. That saying, I’m hoping A-T will be a firm constant in quality and quality discussion over quantity and piddly, ‘hmm that is interesting’ comments – of which I am ashamed to admit, have made at some point in time.

I’d say Amateur Theology is ‘what you make it’ – but that would be stealing a slug (not splug) from Gush and we can’t have that happen.

Now those of you who are intelligent folk (teehee, I used the word folk – now I must go and punish myself or at the least, *cringe*) might recognise that I may have a slight bias in plugging (not splugging or slugging) my fiance’s endeavour – but you can hardly blame me, when the idea is so good and the guy’s pretty hot (read that the other way around!).

STOP. Don’t leave just yet! Oh hang on, here’s me actually telling you that you should leave, just go out via here.

Love, me.

*word to use because I can’t think of one
**I haven’t bothered linking to Google, because I figure it’ll find me anyway and you know how to get there and probably have a link in your toolbar, search, bookmarks, desktop, mind…
***Do come back some time. Please.

Blogging Christianity Humor

Published August 28, 2007 by

Slave to our appreciation

my-mind-is-troubling-me.jpgA beautiful day (yesterday) was dampened momentarily when a guy who was quite drunk decided to sit next to me on the train. It was the middle of the day, the guy was drinking  quite consistently and only hid his bottle when the ticket inspectors came around. It was one of those slightly awkward situations where you don’t know whether to move or not – true it has put you slightly on edge and that’s a bit of a bummer because you were very much enjoying the sun, but you still want to be friendly (or in the least, inoffensive) – there are some things you just leave alone when you’re a girl by herself on public transport.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that I decided that I’d stay where I was, there were enough others on the train and he was rambling outloud quite interestingly.

“You are a slave unless you are extremely wealthy.”

“I’m only drunk because I like being drunk”

“Today I am NOT a slave!”

“We are all slaves.”

I was thinking a bit about the whole slave and free thing in the Bible – you get your typical passages along with plenty of others.

A very small bite of 2 Peter 2 (a part of the Bible I never seem to get around reading):

“They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. ” (v.19)

and,

“I’m only drunk because I like being drunk.”

As irrational as being drunk makes you, this statement is interesting.

We often declare responsibility for our actions as a pretense for something that we truthfully cave to. It looks OK externally. We show the world our ‘in moderation’ but in all honesty we are being run by our addiction , or our ‘interests’, our ‘I’m just being helpful’, or, ‘They can’t cope without me’.

“I’m only doing it because I want to.”

We refuse to acknowledge outloud and sometimes even to ourselves that there is something else deeper that is driving us.

We are slaves to what has mastered or is trying to master us. We need to recognise what that is.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery… You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” (Gal 5:1,7-9)

It’s good to be aware.

Christianity On The Train