Chris and a buddy were here right after school for an evening of serious study. They’re supposed to figure out “Romeo and Juliet” — no small task for a couple 15-year-old boys.
Diane walked into the kitchen and they were eating pizza with SportsCenter on. She said, “I thought you two were supposed to be studying.” Chris replied, “This is the most important part of our studying. We need to rest our brains so we do quality work.”
Who can disagree with that?
Pizza and SportsCenter. To rest the brain. And prepare for quality work.
What is it for you? You have 15 minutes to decompress before you start grading papers or balancing the checkbook. What rests your brain?
- - - -
I’m reminded in this little clip called “Foreskin’s Lament” (that I heard about from Chris Seay) of how important our view of God is. As the author says, “I believe in God. It’s been a real problem for me.”
- - - -
Tomorrow my 300 students will be taking their final exam. I’ll be getting plenty of sleep tonight. I hope they’ll be losing a little bit.
Actually, for me, it’s reading through the blogs that I frequent. That’s my method of “resting the brain,” it’s how I unwind in the early evening. I’m sitting here now, unwinding from a weekend that wasn’t so great, followed by a Monday that wasn’t so great.
At about 10:00 this morning, I thought, “I wish I could just go back to Friday evening and start over. Let’s try this again…maybe we’ll get it right and have a good weekend, followed up by a good Monday.”
Praise God that He lets us start over…His mercies are new EVERY MORNING!
Give me 22 minutes and I’m watching the Office. Since I don’t balance the checkbook in my family I get an extra 7 minutes. Of course, I don’t grade papers either.
They’re struggling with Romeo and Juliet with all the info on the world wide web??
Hey, take it easy on my little girl and that final! I talked to her a while ago and she was studiously at work at the library Starbucks.
Peace.
Unclce Mike,
Here at Southern and Ozark, finals week has been officially called off! Isn’t that amazing?! The ice storm has about 75% of Joplin out of power including all of the schools. No finals for Fall ‘07. I think I picked a good semester to come back home
NO, you didn’t. We miss you and wish that you were here with all the other ACU students taking finals. I know, I know, it was all for good and noble reasons but we miss you anyway.
70’s music…. I love to balance my checkbook, pay bills, surf the web, do a little e-mail…. all to the great tunes from the 70’s… Satelite radio is amazing, pick what you want to hear, with no commercials, AND you get to see who it was singing and the name of the song if you can’t remember…. I feel I may be telling my age!!
Today, definitely Guitar Hero… that’s the way to serious study…
When I was at ACU (1983-1986) it was the hockey game at the campus center downstairs arcade… really relaxing and a great prelude to serious study!!
Figure out _Romeo and Juliet_? The problem is Romeo changes his mind. The comedy would have been called _Romeo and Rosaline_.
Some warm tea and four oreo cookies.
I finished Hitchens tonight. I am having trouble sleeping. I think that perhaps I am not the only one wondering, and doubting. Could you be Mike? I don’t want to walk away from everything I have ever believed, but I don’t want to park my brain in the garage either.
Doubting,
No, you’re not the only one who has ever doubted. Many of the great Saints have, too. But, you owe it to yourself not to be worked up into too much of a turmoil over one book. Don’t park your brain at the door, either the door of simplistic fundamentalism or of fundamentalist atheism.
Did you get any of the links to reviews of these books I linked to in the other thread on Philemon? See here for one in particular:
“This Book is Not Good”, in Commonweal.
Don’t throw a going away party too quickly. If Hitchens can shake you up that easily, I’d suspect you might have been sheltered from good theology and philosophy for too long (I speak from my own experience, here). There’s a whole ocean of thought out there equal and vastly superior to Hitchens. He may be popular, but he’s by no means infallible, and far from the brightest mind in town.
Doubting,
No, you aren’t the only one who has doubted. Many of our nations fathers doubted and practically none of the greatest scientific modern minds believe in the ancient myths in the Bible. And that is just what they are, myths no better than Homer or the Enuma Elish. Your mind is able to reason these things out b/c of millions of years of evolution; don’t let religion hold you back. Religion has shackled humanity for long enough. The ideas in the Jewish and Christian bibles are the ideas of people long, long ago. It is time for a brave new world based on human reason. Can that get us into trouble at times? Of course, but most definitely not any more trouble than religion.
Faith that doesn’t question is no faith at all, Doubting.
And if you’re relying on Hitchens to provide your man-sized view of God, well, he’s no better at trying to figure out God than any of the rest of us. Fortunately, having Him all figured out and categorized in a neat box is not a prerequisite to faith. In fact, it’s not possible. God doesn’t fit in boxes.
And He can’t be kept in tombs.
“And he can’t be kept in tombs” the previous post ends. Does anyone have any kind of proof or logical reason to believe that? Anything other than blind faith? Certainly we all would like that to be true but the 4 gospels that talk about the resurrection as if it were fact can easily be torn apart–they can’t even agree on what day he was arrested or what day he died. They were written decades after the life of Jesus, plenty of time for legends and tall tales to sprout up, especially in a time that didn’t worry itself about real facts.
Doubting,
Your faith has to line up with your (not mine) reality. If you really don’t believe it, then don’t; but don’t stop searching my friend. Don’t buy wholesale into a book without examining it. You wouldn’t want a doctor to do that and play with people’s lives, yet Christians do it every day with the Bible.
My favorite video that deals with a young man asking an old man who lost his wife and son how he manages to still “believe.”
http://www.cmt.com/videos/brooks/66575/believe.jhtml
Peace.
I didn’t mean to leave the impression that Hitchens is the only book that I have read attacking theism. In fact, he really has not raised much new material, but it was the way he drove home his points that has been challanging. Kevin, I did read a good deal of the material you linked to, and I will continue to read.
Mike, I don’t know how this happened but your blog has evolved into a place of conversation…deep conversation….people wrestling with God and their own minds. Deep questions…who is God? who am I in relation to that God? is there really a God? how does God interact with us?
I am thankful for this space. I know that some would say that this isn’t a safe place but I think that it is.
Keep talking.
Holding my son, Truitt, while sitting next to my wife.
Watching PTI and Around the Horn.
Brain candy… Sometimes when there are under 30 comments on your blog, I only read the title and the comments then try to imagine what you wrote about. You would be surprised how many times I read your actual post and start laughing because you have not said any of the things I imagined!
Having to grade 300 finals… I would set the remote for ESPN and put Dominos on speed dial!
“Does anyone have any kind of proof or logical reason to believe that? Anything other than blind faith?”
Martin,
Can you give me hope with out blind faith? I would much rather walk by sight, shoot I would settle for just walking.
Mike, Now I realize this might come as a total surprise to you, but I took a different route when it came to studying. I found that if you reverse those two tasks and time allotments, life was much more enjoyable (at least until grades came out). I would “relax” (read: girls, intramurals, student government, jack around with friends, go 4 wheeling at Phantom, girls, beat pledges, eat, watch a movie, girls, go throw biscuits at couples ‘praying’ in a steamy parked car, shoot a few arrows at Ronald McDonald, throw in a few classes here and there, girls, etc) for like 18 hours, get about 5 hours sleep, 45 minutes for chapel and then I would take a 15 minute break to study. It was more of a “compressing” or cramming if you will, rather than a “decompressing” deal. It worked well for me the 17 years I was working on my undergrad.
I must confess that I did succumb to peer pressure and took a more traditional approach during my graduate studies. Of course that will happen when you have a wife (girl singular), 3 kids (taking your kids out to throw biscuits isn’t as fun as with your buddies), a blown out knee, ankle, back (that and there is something really lame about a 36 year old playing intramurals), and finally, the fact that I think Highland would have frowned on one of their ministers taking shots at a giant inflatable Ronald McDonald with a crossbow. So, yeah, I found more time to study.
Sports Center and the Office (fact!) are solid, but a great haircut from a barber with a shave with that hot shaving cream is the ultimate decompresser for me!
Thanks for this blog.
As a preacher and the son of a preacher, I have struggled over sixty years, begining with simple faith, traveling along the brink of atheism and into the chasm of skepticism, and finally accepting - with many doubts - that we CHOOSE to believe. It is still difficult, but I choose to believe. It is not easy.
Clint,
If you would rather walk by sight than faith, then why not do it? Dismiss those things which are asserted without reason and accept those things which seem reasonable. Parting seas are not reasonable.
And why do we think that the only kind of real hope out there is hope for some streets-paved-with-gold after-life? The tough, though realistic, approach to death is to accept it. Maybe if we spent more time hoping for things in this life (happiness, safety, security, etc.) humanity would be much richer.
I wouldn’t call it “blind” faith. There is accounting and witnessing found in the gospels and Acts. Doesn’t the essence of faith involve not needing to know the exact specifics, logical reasoning, visual proof, etc?
Martin, isn’t “human reason” what always gets us in trouble?
Why read Hitchens anyway? If you are a believer, even a believer with questions, why pick up a book written by an atheist whose only goal is to disprove the existence of God? It seems like would want to read books by believers who have been down the same road and can offer encouragement on how their faith was bolstered.
Doubting,
It is one of the odd things about Christianity that we don’t have a robust notion of “observance” or “practice” (Catholics get closest to this). Rather, we speak a lot about “believers” or “believing Christians.” Which reduces Christianity to a mental state, something you could take a multiple choice quiz about.
While you search, let me plug being an “observant Christian” or “practicing Christian” as a good way to go.
The real issue isn’t what you believe but how you live.
It appears the (other) conversation is focusing on the rationality of Christian belief. Can we accept Christianity on rational grounds, or must it be accepted by faith apart from logical reasons?
Check out Fred Aquino’s “Communities of Informed Judgment.”
All scripture is inspired of God. Peter said he was an eye-witness of Jesus as did many others. Luke said he researched and talked to those who saw the Savior. It is not a blind faith but one that is very reliable based on the evidence of many who saw and heard. In the words of Luke, “…you my know the certainty…”.
C.,
The “accounting and witnessing” found in the NT is no different than the “accounting and witnessing” of, say, Herodotus and Plutarch (both ancient Greek historians). They wrote about events, but they also used supernatural happenings to explain them. Their “miracles”, though, were done by Greek gods, not the Hebrew god. Those early reporters/historians (including the NT writers) had no way to do factual modern investigation. They relied on hearsay.
Does human reasoning always get us into trouble? Maybe sometimes, but certainly not all of the time. When you get sick, you rely on human understanding of chemicals, anatomy, etc. to “heal” you. No deity heals you. Our human reasoning has taken us to the moon. Human reasoning allows us to communicate through these computers. Want to move a mountain? Faith doesn’t do it, machines built by humans do.
Ugh.
“The real issue isn’t what you believe but how you live?”
I want to giggle a little bit, but the overwhelming amount of red-letter text concerning the vitality of belief won’t let me.
Maybe qb misunderstands you, Richard. Surely you mean something other than what your words appear to say. Surely you mean, with James, that belief without deeds is false belief. Surely you don’t mean that “what one believes” is not an issue…or maybe you do!
Eyebrows raised, fer sure,
qb
qb
OK, I came here for even less deep reasons than how I waste time/ “relax my brain”, so there’s no way I can engage in the conversation that has evolved. And, for me, it’s blog-surfing. And 15 minutes turns into 30. Okay, 45. An hour max.
I’m looking for how to buy someone a GOAT for Christmas! Didn’t you get one at some point? Where is the website for that? Is it too late to buy a goat? Are they out yet? There may be a run…
I like to visit this blog to “decompress”…..and listen to JT, Cat Stevens, Carole King, or Simon & Garfunkel.
DU
Martin, you poor thing!
I will be praying for you and all that is good in your life from this point forward will be because of that!
Ponder that for the rest of your life!
Hi qb,
I don’t you are misunderstanding. I think you are reading me right.
Martin,
I have no problem accepting death, I even look forward to it whether there is a God or not. As for hope in this world apparently you have not suffered much, for some there is no hope in this word. So if my choices for hope are; this world, death as in rover, or a life with God (what ever that is); I chose God, with blind faith, unless you can give me hope in something worthwild.
“Religion has shackled humanity for long enough.”
You are so right, religion is a smug tyrant. Faith is a totally different situation, giving hope and promise; so much so that those of Faith want nothing more than to demonstrate their love for God in their acts of love to others of His creation.
As far as trying to explain God, if God could be fully explained by man’s logic or stuffed into man’s mold, He would not be God. Do we really seek a deity that fits our logic and does what we would do in any given situation? Or do we want a true, living Almighty God that totally transcends, and probably laughs at man’s puny attempts to describe Him with their highfalutin “knowledge”?
One comment about Hitchens [and that's one more than he deserves, imho] - he is not an atheist per se, rather he is a God-hater. He seems very angry with God for some reason, spending time hurling insults in God’s face. In my opinion he DOES believe in God, he just doesn’t like what he sees and doesn’t understand. And he doesn’t want anyone else to be pleased with God either.
Rather than suggest reading Hitchens, I’d prefer suggesting Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell and their journeys as once atheists to now men of deep Faith.
No Clint, I can’t give you hope; you have to either come up with that yourself or rely on those who think they have it all figured out. You can accept their explanations if you wish b/c they certainly offer a shelter against the empty blue sky of meaningless. Accepting life and the world as it is is very difficult and not for everyone.
Clint,
You have reasoned that Martin hasn’t suffered much.
One of the most hopeful, optimistic people I’ve ever known was a Russian Jew in Dubna, Russia, whom I met as an English teacher there in 1994. His father “disappeared” during Stalin’s purge of the 1930s and he was a Soviet army mine sweeper on the eastern front during WWII, in which most of his buddies in his unit got their legs blown off. He suffered perhaps more than most of us and yet held on to the importance of human love. He was a peace activist and loved humanity, yet remained agnostic until the day he died last year.
So don’t assume that Martin hasn’t suffered much just because of his agnostic optimism. There are plenty of hopeful and even joyful agnostics in the world who love sacrificially and want to make the world a better place.
Martin,
If you can not give me hope what do you have to offer that is worth anything.
“most of his buddies in his unit got their legs blown off”
Jon,
Did he loose his legs?
Jon,
What would you have to offer Jonny Kennedy
if he was still alive?
qb,
If I understand what Richard is suggesting–and Richard, please correct me if I’m wrong–he’s arguing that our confidence in our beliefs will not be unwavering. In fact, in some cases, we may always have questions, doubts. Nonetheless, our calling as Christians is to live as Christ, which is ultimately a call to action.
clint,
No, my agnostic Russian friend did not lose his legs in WW2, nor his memory of the atrocities that befell both his military and civilian comrades through decades of oppression and war.
Sorry, I don’t get your drift with the Jonny Kennedy link, which I read. Can you clarify what you mean?
Thanks
Jon,
There are people in this word whose suffering is so great, that there is no hope in suffering alone. Therefore hope in this world is empty.
Clint,
I have no snake oil to sell you (maybe people should be more cautious of those who do sell snake oil, those who have all the answers). But I can tell you that throwing off the heavy burden of an unrealistic worldview is extremely freeing. Some people–not all–learn that life is much better without requiring some cosmic prop.
True religion has never shackled anybody. It has helped to set people free, teach the gospel and extend hands of compassion. And this has been true since the first church of Christ in Jerusleum.
Sarah, are you wanting to buy a goat and give it to a friend?
Or are you looking for the charitable organization that gives livestock to people in third world countries?
If the latter, it is Heifer International; you can google that.
Michael
Sarah S.,
Last time I was at the Abilene Livestock Auction they had goats. It is off of I-20 between Abilene and Clyde. I think when I was there it was on a Wednesday. Assuming you’re looking for a pet, I’m sure you can find a kid for $50 or less. If you’re looking for a show goat, there are several breeders around the Abilene area that would surely be willing to help you out.
In any event, I sure didn’t plan on talking about goats at this blog (unless we were talking about sacrifices or scapegoats).
C.,
I read some of those books because the lost read them. I don’t feel equipped to minister to the lost unless I understand the barriers they are seeing to reconciliation with Christ. But you’re point is well taken. I think we should guard our faith against the seeds of doubt that Satan loves to plant. There are days when it’s not wise for me to read Hitchens or the like. Going back to Richard’s comment though, those books probably aren’t as poisonous as my own inaction and apathy.
I never planned on talking about goats when
Sarah - World Vision has the goats. My co-workers & I just bought one (and 2 chickens) in our boss’ name.
Martin,
I am not looking for snake oil, all I want is hope. Why are you against people looking for hope?
And there’s our answer: Goats!
Whether Christians, atheists, or doubters, let’s buy goats for families who need them and make the world a better place! http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.2529663/
I guess I am going back to the original post by Mike. I use Sudoku as a means of relaxation. I am a numbers guy
As a strange coincidence, my parents asked for a Heifer goat for Christmas. This is our third year donating to Heifer instead of buying presents (between myself and my parents). I sure would highly recommend it.
I am curious now whether Sarah meant a pet or a donation animal!
SG, you would have never guessed the original post from these comments! This blog is definitely a great way to decompress and get a laugh. Or a cry, whatever the case may be.
Martin and Doubting: I’m going to go with Mike’s son Chris here and recommend some pizza and some SportsCenter before you undertake any serious study of the Bible. If you still find its ambition to be a book of facts rather than faith, come on back and tell us why. If you can only believe facts but not stories others tell and accounts written by eyewitnesses, come on back and explain why to us.
Most of us, I think will be willing to read your comments with an open mind. Yup, we’ll probably CHOOSE (as Jerry emphasizes) to believe anyway.
Point is, you don’t read a novel or a cookbook or a book of poetry expecting to find nothing but statements of fact. Why would you do that with a book of faith?
My nephew is one of those freshmen…and he loves your class…he didn’t even ask me to make comment here.
Keith Brenton,
The pizza and SportsCenter were very relaxing, thanks for the advice. I love stories and the Bible is full of them, which is probably why it is such an endearing collection of texts. But there are lots of stories in the world, lots of ANCIENT stories. All ancient stories deal with supernatural events. Using reason, practically all Christians dismiss all of those supernatural occurances (even though the stories are great, think Homer, Gilgamesh, etc.) in all ancient texts, except for the Bible. Why? Most likely you believe as fact in the resurrection of Jesus, a dead person. That belief is completely unreasonable. Why don’t you also believe that Utnapishtim has eternal life as stated in the “Enuma Elish”? Keith, stories are great, but the Biblical stories are no better than any other.
And of course you are “going to believe anyway.” I am a fool if I think I can replace years of indoctrination with my simple arguments.
It’s that “unreasonableness” that illuminates the power and glory of God!
C., really, why do you want to be reasonable about everything EXCEPT religion? Maybe it is b/c you have been told to be unreasonable all your life by those you respect? Maybe, C., they are wrong.
How far does the mysterious have to go before it is just ludicrous?
Actually, “unreasonable” is your word. I find it reasonable. Why? Because what IS ludicrous is believing there was a big bang, or whatever you believe the beginning might have been, and from that came a solar system with a big ball of fire that planets cicle in an unchanging orbit. One of those planets just happens to be the perfect distance to promote living organisms. Organisms that have evolved into numerous species of insects, birds, animals, and of course, humans. Humans that live on an earth that has changing seasons, atmosphere, land (where you can plant a seed and grow food), water(some fresh, some salt). Humans that live in an unbelievably intricate and complex body. A body with a central nervous system, lungs to breate, a heart, etc, all protected by a muscular and skeletal shell that just happens to be covered by the amazing organism called skin.
These are just some highlights, with much, much more incredible things that surround us that scream “CREATOR”. Anyone that can create such beauty and complexity can certainly perform what you call “unreasonable”.
Martin, few if any of those epic stories try to represent themselves as anything beyond legend and myth and entertainment. I don’t know of an entire clan of people who insist on them as the word of God or the gods today.
I’m not aware of any from the same eras that reveal a love for mankind by the deity which created everything, a guide for mankind’s behavior that reflects that love, nor an offer and means of extending immortality to those among mankind who will accept it.
Certainly none that involve the fully human, fully divine son of that deity serving as a sacrifice. Do you see what I’m getting at? You’re comparing apples and oranges - histories and legends with a book of faith. It’d be like comparing a high school social studies book with the Koran. Whatever you believe or don’t believe, you surely can see that we’re talking about two different literary genres.
You don’t find phrases in The Odyssey that say, “I write this so that you may believe,” but you do in 1 John 5:13 of the Bible - and similar expressions in many other places within it.
I don’t have to accept everything in the Bible as literal expression of fact as long in order to believe in the truth behind it. You can’t explain particle physics to a child, and you couldn’t possibly do justice to the story of creation (for example) to a civilization that was just getting familiar with things like writing and law.
Maybe God created with a big bang.
He might have, lol:) Whatever the method, I just know God created.
Call of Duty 4 - the only way to prepare for serious study!