UNDONE

that is quite a preface. i think i understand sati...

2009-11-02T10:41:18.010-08:00

that is quite a preface. i think i understand satire. here goes...

Daryl said: When I hear him speak about losing...

2009-10-30T18:32:22.449-07:00

Daryl said:
When I hear him speak about losing the mission, I cannot help but think of Baudrillard and the evolution of reality. It's kind of exciting.
10/30/09 3:56 PM

When I hear him speak about losing the mission, I ...

2009-10-30T15:56:52.545-07:00

When I hear him speak about losing the mission, I cannot help but think of Baudrillard and the evolution of reality. It's kind of exciting.

hey cool, D, thanks! I have not seen that video,be...

2009-10-30T15:00:44.228-07:00

hey cool, D, thanks! I have not seen that video,before. Baudrillard is fun stuff. I'l write more later or catch up to you on Sunday. This sick thing has me squinting too much :P

I checked out this video, which I think is David F...

2009-10-25T23:31:13.823-07:00

I checked out this video, which I think is David Fitch talking about his book and I had a few thoughts:

1. I was kind of convicted. There was a guy today asking for some change for food after church. No body knew where the grocery cards (we even had circular pointing of responsibility). James finally found them and talked to the guy for a few minutes, then we all left him to get our lunch. That's kind of like hospitality, but not really.

2. Seems like we underutilize web resources. I feel like that video would be great to share with other people, if not only to let us know that we are not an isolated pocket in our beliefs.

3. I am interested in how he speaks on post-modernism and the church. I was reading excerpts from Baudrillard yesterday and the part about the break of the relationship between the symbol and the truth, until the symbol becomes a truth in itself seems very applicable to the way I think. I feel like there is a dilusion of reality, so people are searching for something real.

As a layperson who loved academic theology in scho...

2009-10-23T14:41:20.146-07:00

As a layperson who loved academic theology in school, I can definitely relate to your post! Most of the time I solve my own withdrawl problem by going to lectures and conferences.

@Roger: Thanks! You can tell how deep I am into t...

2009-10-23T10:34:40.347-07:00

@Roger: Thanks! You can tell how deep I am into the coffee mug by how long the posts are. :)

@Marika: I think your observations about the fear of liberal theology are spot-on. Here in the US there is a distinct anti-intellectual bent, too. Sadly, I also know a number of folks who lost there faiths as well, due only to the suggestion Paul didn't write the Pastorals, and in a way, their churches set them up for it if they never engaged in any theological reflection or mention other than the practical party line.

Cheers, all!

Well, Fitch confessed he was frustrated when he wr...

2009-10-23T10:26:54.467-07:00

Well, Fitch confessed he was frustrated when he wrote them, but I think their value lies in how incisively they address wrong expectations about church. Each point is a response to a lie that people believe. For me, the power in the article came from the resounding "yes!" I felt when this person, 1000's of miles away was able to so directly speak to the tensions we have in church, too.And while it might keep people away, that could be a good thing - the person who desires all those things critiqued will not like Fitch's church or ours, and I would argue they have misunderstood what church is.
But you're right - it's crappy brochure material, and in other places he has positively stated his values and what should be expected. :)
He has a great book if you're interested!
http://tiny.cc/Rpt94

I literally just wrote a blog post about a similar...

2009-10-23T09:08:41.856-07:00

I literally just wrote a blog post about a similar thing here: http://tinyurl.com/yfkqn3w. I think that people in churches feel like they should be able to understand academic theology, and when they can't, they just disengage, not really taking into account the fact that they probably wouldn't understand any other academic speech either (as a theologian, I'm totally lost when it comes to science, though I'm glad that scientists are out there doing their incomprehensible science to make my life better by creating stuff like fridges). And theologians are just as bad at recognising that their relationship to the church isn't necessarily quite the same as the relationship of a particle physicist to Joe Bloggs (http://tinyurl.com/rbsctz).

I think it's partly because theology has been separated from the church insofar as it's now an academic discipline rather than something monks do. And I think its also because the liberal theology which led people to start suggesting that maybe Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead, and the Protestant theology which worries that theological tradition will suck the life out of Christianity means that people see theology as something which can destroy faith just as much as it builds it up (and I've known people who lost their faith pretty much as a result of studying theology at university).

It's messy, huh? But good post, it made me think (as you probably guessed already).

I wonder the purpose of these "expectations". I am...

2009-10-22T13:30:36.320-07:00

I wonder the purpose of these "expectations". I am terrified of new things and knowing what to expect helps me to deal with my anxiety a little better. These expectations seem more like trying to keep people away, rather than engaging in the things we "should expect". Do you think they were really meant to be told to someone as advice or just a way of venting?

YOW! Well done!

2009-10-17T17:51:29.493-07:00

YOW! Well done!

Hey Pastor Erin, Thanks so much for writing this....

2009-10-16T01:05:48.075-07:00

Hey Pastor Erin,

Thanks so much for writing this. I had to look up "parrhesia" and I am excited that you are calling for it. I have things that I see in myself and in our church that I have a desire to discuss, but I was unsure if that desire was just me being insensitive to others and justifying it by calling it "truth". I am still pulling my thoughts together, but it is very much related to our latest series.

I may have to take you up on it, D!

2009-10-15T18:52:09.258-07:00

I may have to take you up on it, D!

This is perfect timing, actually... I need an arti...

2009-10-15T10:21:23.822-07:00

This is perfect timing, actually... I need an article for a class, but our university subscription to SAGE is acting up and won't load. Thanks for the tip.

bummer - you're right. I can't find it at the ar...

2009-10-15T10:10:43.431-07:00

bummer - you're right. I can't find it at the archive any longer. I'll leave it up and mark it broken in case a later search can uncover it. Thanks for the heads-up.

The last Vanhoozer lecture at Westminster is now a...

2009-10-15T08:29:31.415-07:00

The last Vanhoozer lecture at Westminster is now a broken link

If you want any help with either the HTML or movin...

2009-10-13T23:10:13.643-07:00

If you want any help with either the HTML or moving the blog to the church server, let me know. I'm running a wordpress blog on my server and made a theme for it too (I guess I'll include my link this time where it shows my name).

cool stuff, thanks for the link Daryl. Poe's law,...

2009-10-09T09:14:13.577-07:00

cool stuff, thanks for the link Daryl. Poe's law, indeed!

www.theopedia.com has collected a lot of good stuf...

2009-10-09T07:58:21.919-07:00

www.theopedia.com has collected a lot of good stuff on the bio articles and on various topics too

Here's the link to Colbert on the topic :) http:/...

2009-10-09T00:31:15.344-07:00

Here's the link to Colbert on the topic :)

http://www.indecisionforever.com/2009/10/08/colbert-vs-conservapedia/

I saw this mentioned on Digg, which at least shows...

2009-10-08T15:09:40.862-07:00

I saw this mentioned on Digg, which at least shows the impression it is leaving.

Not sure if this is appropriate, but I am reminded of the beginning of the Tao Te Ching, which states the great Tao cannot be spoken, but we can see the little tao.

I am also reminded of all the times I got into arguments, only to realize we were talking about two different things. Language is tricky and confusing. We should all just be telepathic.

wow. just wow.

2009-10-07T22:01:22.802-07:00

wow.
just wow.

It appears that this is all too real...and thus, v...

2009-10-07T21:11:20.334-07:00

It appears that this is all too real...and thus, very frightening! Conservapedia is very tightly controlled by its founder, Andy Schlafly (son of conservative christian activist, Phyllis Schlafly). And the wiki article in question shows a history of being edited by Schlafly himself. In fact, his username is on the vast majority of all edits. And after this article hit the big time on Huffington Post, etc. the article was vandalized, but has since been reverted -- and protected -- by Schlafly himself.

The current version is the standard for this article. So, they're quite serious...sadly.

hahaha, wild stuff. There are some fine theology j...

2009-10-03T12:48:09.613-07:00

hahaha, wild stuff.
There are some fine theology journals too, last time I checked.
I hope...

Thanks so much for the notice. I found an interes...

2009-10-03T11:46:23.973-07:00

Thanks so much for the notice. I found an interesting journal called "Journal of Vibration and Control." And the first article is, "Slow Passage through Multiple Parametric Resonance Tongues."

Abstract: This work concerns linear parametrically excited systems that involve multiple resonances. The property of such systems is that if the parameters are fixed and lie inside a resonance tongue, the motion becomes unbounded as time goes to infinity. In this work we consider what happens when the parameters are not fixed, but rather are constrained to vary slowly in time, passing into and out of the resonance tongues.
One might expect that during the time in which the motion lies inside a tongue the solution grows, and that the slower the passage through the tongue the more time is spent inside the tongue, and the larger the resulting growth. We show that this is not always the case. In particular we investigate the effect of initial conditions and relative forcing amplitudes on the growth or amplification of the solution. We address the problem of
how to choose these parameters so as to minimize growth (i.e., to de-amplify the solution) after passage through multiple tongues.

Keywords: Parametric excitation, slow passage, multiple resonances, amplification.

Thanks again, Obliged, Daniel