Reading Paul in a Postmodern Context

In the face of a disconnected world
    where home is a domain in cyberspace
    where neighbourhood is a chat room
    where public space is a shopping mall
    where information technology promises
    a tuned in, reconnected world
        all things hold together in Christ
        the creation is a deeply personal cosmos
            all cohering and interconnected in Jesus

...just a small cut n' paste from Brian J. Walsh in an a remixing of the epistle of Colossians from the apostle Paul.

...i don't know if this is how Paul would say it today, but it does touch a nerve at least on my present despair... i thought it an interesting note also that at the top of the booklist from the leading post-modern Christian spokesman is Walker Percy's non-fiction, Message in a Bottle. it's a book on semiotics and communications and finding meaning with others through the mystery of words. (it's an ok read and interesting... just strange to find it here... hmmmmmmm what's the connection?.... i continually find myself reading the sign-posts in life - looking for clues.... oddly enough, they seem to pop up with some kind of synchronicity.)

...incidently, the full title is The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do With the Other by Walker Percy

Christian Anarchist

...maybe I should be a Christian anarchist like this Jesus. I could dig hanging out with Tolstoy, Thoreau and Kierkegaard as a bonus, too.

Post Modern Christians vs. Fundamentalist Christians ?

...amazing.

... there is a serious little feud going on in Christianity that i didn't even know about... Emerging Church VS. traditional Evangelicals... pretty interesting too....

...a good start for me was reading an open letter by Brian McLaren to Chuck Colson (former Nixon "hatchet man" and founder of a born-again prison ministries) in response to an article in Christianity Today condemning the "emerging church."

...then Chuck Colson writes back.

(...good but heady intros into both fields of thought)

Can I be completely honest with myself and still be a Christian? VI

Yeah. I can..

...and i don't mean Yes! or Hell Yes! nor do i mean yeah just kind a.... i just mean yeah... just yeah.

I'm doing it now. I am completely honest with myself and yet somehow i'm still a Christian.

I've been doing it a long time.

...hmmmmm...

I'd like to say this is the end of these doubts and struggles, but it's not. This thirsty quest never ends. It just seems to pause now and then.

Christianity in a Post Modern Culture?

...before I go off on my study/tirade of stuff Jesus said, i've gotta point out this new flow of churchianity called the "emergent chuch." the chief criticism of it of late has come a baptist theologian here. Responses are now being made by what this theologian has tagged as the leaders of this emergent church. ...and just as i'm starting to learn that there is an emerging church they're thinking about changing the name.

...in reality it seems to be a movement trying to be inline with the emerging post-modern culture that we find ourselves in along with the technobabble "now-this" culture that goes with it... (huff huff... pant.. pant... i can't hardly keep up.)

...anyway, i don't even think i'll go round and around again in my mind of what Jesus said and did... i don't understand it. I don't understand Him... i try... i just don't ... what's the Kingdom of God? ...where is it? is it literal? is it just within me? is it yet to come? i've had answers on these things before, but i don't think i do now... but i think i can still answer my primary question... Can I be completely honest with myself and still be a Christian?

...if by "being a Christian" i mean being a follower and believer of what is the historical Jesus Christ and not being a member of some complex socio-cultural value-laden mostly protestant predominantly pop-cultured Americanish consumer society, then i can answer my long-blogging question to myself. Yes, i think i can. But it's still a movement of faith beyond the simply rationale. I can't explain it, but i don't feel intellectually compromised.

... i just believe, damn it! ...can't you just accept that?!

...and i'm not stupid!

(sorry - got a little hostile there)

:)

Can I be completely honest with myself and still be a Christian? - part V

So I have to take some time off to go and study what this Christ said. (Like I haven't done this a zillion times already, yet here I am again still. Geesh!)

But I can make some preamble discussion points that I’ve already discovered from past research that I just can't hardly question any further. These basically are as follows:

Jesus the Jew was not an urban myth.

The Jesus of Nazareth tale is not a hoax. Nor is it an ex post facto fabrication of a group of fishermen turned religious zealots. Nor was it a simple exaggeration into the miraculous of common day events. He did exist in history and he did walk the course of miles and miles from one town to the next and back again in the Galilee region around 30 A.D. preaching revolutionary ideas and performing what appeared to be miracles to the crowds that followed him.

There's just been too much serious serious research effort and studies done walking and tracing the paths that Jesus of Nazareth walked. I've read about half of Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah published in 1885 and this is a monumental publication of known research efforts. It’s totally amazing to me how every step and saying has been ad infinitum compared to the culture and geography of the time and mapped out over and over again. To make a cheap argument that Jesus never existed is intellectually lazy and intentionally self-deceptive at best -even when presented from pseudo-experts in a pseudo-documentary.

The documentation we have about Jesus Christ is reliable.

Again, there's just too much research that's been done on this. (I don't even begin to have to energy to go and try to disprove or prove any of the New Testament starting from myself.)

I can at least go back and read the biographies (gospels) written by Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and be satisfied that I am reading the words that this special guy named Jesus actually said to these people at the time.

Again, ultimately I could be wrong. I could always be wrong. But I think I can be at peace enough, given the studies done by others, that I don't have to keep going back to the fundamental questions of "how do you know Jesus even existed?" and "how do you know the writing we have of him aren’t frauds?"

I think I can safely study the words of Jesus to see what he said.

I'd much rather all this be obvious. But it's not.

I'd much rather also that I could "know for sure" when I conclude things, but unfortunately, I must admit, that I will always be open to the idea that I may be wrong - whatever a viewpoint I take. That sucks.

But I didn't create this situation. I'm only a creature within it - standing upon a desert isle looking around to see what I can find.

Can I be completely honest with myself and still be a Christian? - part IV

And so, I am lost.

I stand upon a desert isle looking around trying to find out how i got here and is Anyone ELSE out THERE.

I don't know. I can stand around and speculate. I look around and see what i can find. I can ask other people and see what they think and what they've found. But they are no better off than me. Everyone else seems also to be standing alone on an isle in need of an answer.

I can conclude. Yep. This is all there is. I don't see another Grand-One controlling things. I don't see a father figure, all-knowing, all-powerful Being ruling this grand universe or my tiny floating rock island. No one else is out there. Yep. I am alone - just you and me - and this rock island - and the few other things i see growing and crawling around.

But i can start studying. I can look around.

It wouldn't be right for me to just stand here and complain that the universe hasn't blatantly revealed itself to me. And God, if he exists, he should've just been obvious. Maybe i have to work to find out. Maybe i have to struggle through this exploration of the world (science) to find what i can find. Maybe to conclude that He is not there, because He's not made himself obvious to me is just plain stupid and arrogant on my part. Who the heck do i really think i am. Maybe (just maybe), it's not all about me. Or you.

[But I've already concluded that God can't be discovered through the obvious or through scientific instruments that extend the obvious. So now I'm just going in circles.]

....hmmmm... maybe it ain't about me ... i'm still tempted to complain though.... i'm kind of whiny and expecting and needy by nature... but that's just me... i'm a whiny-baby.

Waaaaahhhhhhhhhh !!!

Help! Somebody give me answer!

Crap. Nobody's out there. Or he's not listening. Or he's mad at me. Or he just don't care. Or he's a deaf-mute. Or he's just not there. Or He's there, but my preferred means of communication and way of knowing isn't His way of communication and knowing. Maybe i am in some kind of strange problematic fix of space and time that makes me this hampered creature that i am. Maybe i am some kind of remnant genetic adaptation that's just plain fucked up.

But... as hard as i try... i can't pretend i don't know this other story... this one i keep trying to forget. I keep trying to disbelieve. One i desperately don't want to believe, but at the same time can't deny that i've heard.

This crappy guy named Jesus Christ. Yes. He screws everything up. If you listen to him (or actually the words his students CLAIMED he said), he messes up everything. If he hadn't come along, or if i hadn't heard his story and his words, i'd be a simple scientific atheist asshole (not that atheists are assholes, but I would be definitely.)

Thanks Jesus. Thanks for screwing it all up. Why did you come and say all you said and die and then all you dang diciples who claimed he came back from the dead and walked around and revealed other things and said all this stuff about God. Then these dang disciples had to go and actually BELIEVE all that they said and all that they saw and then say all that they said they saw! What the heck?! You guys were making all that up, right? Then why'd you take it all the way to your graves? This story should've died on the vine. Or faded into another myth.

You all sure did make a big splash in this human drama. For just one guy and 12 followers, you set the world on fire.

Jesus - you said things that make all the difference in the world. I've got to reconsider everything now.

What? You don't even know what all he's said? You bum! You lazy bum! You're as whiny as me - almost.

(gee.... have i gone schizo now? maybe. but at least i'm moving. it gets tiring just standing in a corner beating myself all the time... geez, haven't i been this route before.... it looks familiar... how'd i get all the way back to the starting block? ... i forget things soooooooooo easily.... [sigh!]...[grooooan!].... [sigh some more.])