..is hard to do?

It seems most of my life is on a project of curiosity — how has humanity through the ages viewed the transcendent realms: the location of hope, of curiosity, of mystery and potential and of infinite fear? Religions deal with this, philosophy like Existentialism deals with this. So as I view these various perspectives and values, I find that Christian beliefs are surprisingly sturdy, and they get pretty-well along with many ideas. In this dialogue, I end up finding a new sense of depth and goodness to my faith.

But that’s intellectual appreciation. It doesn’t really do much for the soul. I can appreciate an idea, but act entirely outside it’s parameters. And that’s where churches get curious. Sunday mornings are filled with squishy songs, and large groups of people wearing their heart on their sleeves, embracing the aesthetics of language and sound (albeit in the form of socially-normative prescribed behaviors). I think a lot, and I’m thinking about what’s occurring instead of embracing and embodying like other people.

I remember asking myself, around age 20, “Do I wanna be like (committed, expressive) person “A” over there?” It scared me. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be, but I was still attracted to what it could be like. Being convinced, being self-transcendent, being energetic, being hopeful. And for a time, I was, or at least thought I was, but it didn’t do/accomplish much. Finding myself no further in life, I guess I’ve regressed into myself again. Given alternatives, I’m thrilled with the person and work of Christ.. I’m thrilled to be with my wife in the face of being alone. Life together is great, and so much more dynamic.

I think what I’m saying is that reminders and motivators for love certainly vary by time, place and person. But what seems screwy to me is the general church assumption that worship-music helps people fall in love with Jesus more. That seems a little weird, since love itself is the kind of thing which multiples itself. Oh sure, eucharist is all about remembering, sermons are all about remembering, songs are about remembering, and Peter said his whole duty was to remind the church of what she forgets.. but there seems to me that sometimes words aren’t enough. Sometimes I need to talk with people. Sometimes I do like my heart on my sleeve, but oftentimes it’s been beat down into hiding with cliche. Authentic love is amazingly powerful, and that’s why I’m thrilled to be married. And that’s what I’m looking for among church-members. Does such love cross intellectual borders? Yes, but not when we’re all reveling in our own understandings. I’ll love you and I’ll listen to your stories about your kids, but I need you to listen and hear me ramble about Sartre & Wittgenstein.. because ya just did.

Anyone who has read this blog knows I’m a HUGE fan of Johannine lit, and that thanks to the last class in undergrad I took which explained it for me. But in detail, John, being a good shepherd himself, attempts to teach each person to listen to God’s voice (truth) – not just in example, not in knowledge, but in experience – in a soul. “You already know, what you have already heard from the beginning..” He is always calling us to look to what we know, and dive in deeper instead of thinking you already know it, and trying to add on novelties.

Contrast this with Conservative Evangelicalism, which seems to presume Jesus & Paul going around shouting. So in the image they perceive, they fulfill and follow! However, such shouting to the masses is likely not the reality of the matter: Jesus was very discerning, even selective (Zaccheus!) & did not shout or assume all men were willing & able to listen..

John however, followed this selectiveness, speaking to those who can hear instead of forcing ears to be open, or trying to open men’s hearts and lives into conformance, only killing men in the end, creating callous hearts unable to feel or hear the shepherd’s voice, which ought to be known and heard much easier without all this violence..

Now, I understand how all this happened: mid/late modern individuals felt the truth needed defense or modernizing.. that it was an untenable position in the eyes of the masses and needed to be made ‘hearable’ to men’s ears. Sadly, with the updating of this ‘hearability’ or the truth, it weakens the hearability in one’s soul, and even those ‘ears’ were already being closed up by other anti-humane Modern traits and trends.

So what of it all? We are now in a place historically where men’s hearts are pushing against these systemic heart-closing trends, and the most of us who grew up with the half-truth are returning to its fullness once again. To avoid such troubles, what ought we expect in our lives? In our ‘small groups’, amongst our friends, towards our modern cubicle jobs?

Most of us in our 20′s are holding on to some form of identity statements. There’s a set of reactionary statements we make, pushing us from our stodgy, modern childhood & adolescence through our college brains into something called ‘life’ now. Most of us don’t have a good idea where we’re being pushed into, and most of us are ok with just being reactionary. It’s a tad healthy to ‘get away’ from all that was killing us and driving us crazy, but at the same time, it’s not very healthy to not have a solid, grounded, well-explained and considered position or two. Most of us are addicted to reactionism, since it’s just too easy, relative to being responsible & chained down or something.

So what are we to hold on to? What is “what we have heard since the beginning”? Our childhood? The politics and weird social ideologies surrounding “Jesus loves me”? How our parents are too squishy to have anything behind them? Or, our novel ideas which we would say are ‘the beginning’ to our ‘new’ lives as rational adults?

The answer to these q’s are obviously “yes and no”. There’s truth just about anywhere, and that’s the point. Modernism has taught us to learn something, learn it’s place, and them move on from it. That is “growth”. But John’s repetitive writing is obnoxiously incompatible with such a late western ideal. In all my studying of the philosophy of mind and Artificial Intelligence, there’s one thing that makes us human, and it’s not ‘choice’ like The Matrix held up. It’s our forgetfulness. Sure we can ‘learn and move on’, but life isn’t so hierarchical or ordered. We forget (oddly enough, in a logarithmic curve), and we need to be reminded, and relearn not just ‘the place’ but the places each idea influences.

For instance, we are taught to ‘love your neighbor’. (That is sufficiently ‘from the beginning’ as well!) Our first modern question is “and who is our neighbor?” We can learn through someone telling us that we are “to love everyone.” But most of us will not learn such a lesson until they fail to love everyone they meet, and learn the consequences of creating so many broken hearts in this world. This is the repetition we need, for the forgetfulness we bear, and the central point behind grace and mercy shown to another as well as us: we fail, and given enough time, we just might succeed once in awhile.

So back to our small-group. What and how are we to expect our friends to grow and learn? It’s awfully depressing to hear the same issues and concerns each week over and over again, but it’s awfully pressured to feel like we ought learn something weighty upon our hearts.

I’ve never been a fan of ‘a new topic each week’. It’s fickle, and who is doing anything more than repeating their trite identity-building resolutions/reactions anyways? Book-studies are better, and oddly enough, they are more pointed. That’s my point: perhaps ‘small groups’ ought not be focused on the people involved, the times that are compatible to meet, topics agreed upon, but each group have one central goal/theme/recurring idea. “We go to the ‘grace’ group”, or “This is the ‘wrath of God’ group”( ) that kinda sounds fun. The point is to focus our lives around a topic we believe we need to learn, and then to dive in, reminding each other each week ow that has played out in our lives for good or ill, how we forgot, how that could have been useful to survive the week, or perhaps in mildly more intellectual fashion: compare-contrast: each week is a new topic, yes, but how does some societal problem, theological point, sermon this week fail or succeed with or without mercy, or love? This way we learn the depths of God’s truth, love, mercy and wrath. Perhaps even reading a book on the topic, or reading another book off-topic to see how it is or is not shown in characters’ lives..

This all sounds so fruitful to live in the reality of  human forgetfulness instead of in the modern assumption of learn-and-move-on. Most of us will never move on from the Gospel. The love of God is not something to ‘step up from’.. Our lives are not just built on top of his grace, but each brick’s substance is his grace.

While I was first introduced to Myers-Briggs (Jung!) I’ve long since revelled in the DISC system. And tonight, I think I finally have found explicit use for the Jungian system.

The first analytic idea is to assume any one of the 16 MB categories is the ideal of one of the D,I,S or C. This is utter failure though. I realize now it’s more of a noun-verb thing. The DISC is pretty clear on behavior. MB is horrid at behavior, but *so much* better at means and intention.

For instance: I know a few people who are dominant “I” folk. (In fact all my major friends are IC’s!) But there is huge variation in what constitutes their actions. One will talk and talk and talk thinking he’s adding to an idea, when truly, he’s only saying the same thing 5 different ways. This gets old quick, but fact is, he’s focusing on the interpreting of info part of the Feeling over Sensory on MB. However, there’s another character who likes to come up with stories as he speaks.. his words take him places: he actually IS adding meaning, but he’s also open the new things (MB: Intuition!), whereas the first guy is stuck, having already decided, and now just trying to influence his decision. I like stories. And short attention spans.

An interesting quote from French President Nicholas Sarkozy (from AFP):

..that many of the hundreds of French soldiers executed for desertion or mutiny during the war “had not dishonoured themselves, were not cowards, but had simply been pushed to the extreme limit.

Critique:

1. Modernism (as foreseen by Nietzsche and Marx) dehumanizes us into pawns to be maneuvered, not humans with boundaries to be built up and valued. Likewise, there was the expectation that human boundaries were much larger than they are presently considered to be. Furthermore, post-imperial thinking was enarmoured by modernism’s technology and love of orderly boundaries.
2. PostModernism now recognized those lowered boundaries/expectations on us, allowing us to be more ‘pansy’, but also to feel and enjoy and create art not war now that those boundaries are more accepted, and pride is less accepted.
3. Personal pride of being the hero and love for country is hardly ever greater than love for self-protection and those we trust (thank you Maslow). If it is, then such pride has likely taken over any genuine love and interest in people (nevermind that Christian citizenship is international).

“..without adequate public debate” is an interesting phrase. What’s that all about? Likely, that in a democratic environment, this is important that the people *feel they have the power*. Ahh the sensibilities of the masses. While I find crowd behavior easy to mock, in this case it’s important. It’s the choice between public frenzy & outrage vs. a peaceable relationship between ruler/ruled.

And I have trouble with it, because is it really about the public feeling ok with things? feeling they have power? When is emotionality bankrupt?

Let’s spin this one in a different context: parenting. There’s 2 ways to tell a child ‘no’. 1) tell him no (period). 2) talk through it. The trouble comes when #2 is all a sham, when no amount of talking would ever change the authority’s position. Now, besides that being the Straw-man fallacy. It’s really just #1, only worse: you’re mocking the child’s reason (hint: demeaning them!)

Notice how false-discussion only works when, in both cases, whoever is under the authority is moved emotionally. This is the case for smaller children of course, but what of rapidly-becoming rational(let’s hope) late-youth/collegians? Sure, youth are more emo than adults, but let’s take a decently grounded & rational college kid. All of a sudden any intellect he/she may have is sent back to grammar school: No, you’re really just dumb. Hardly good parenting.

Aside: It’s not really democracy when ppl don’t have the power. How crazy is it that I have to choose in unsatisfactorily large probabilities in elections. I don’t get to vote over issues. No one asks me, and no one tells me what issues go on in government. Rather, instead, I get to choose someone who likely is uninformed about the 45 issues I value deeply, and instead only plays to a generic set of 10-20 ‘hot topics’ which I’m usually ambivalent about.

And of course parenting is hardly democracy( the power isn’t in the children), but consider power vs. love vs. knowledge vs. respect. It’s a multi-faceted arena. To ignore half of those and make it about one or two topics only is degrading reality, and living in a lowered-resolution (photography/printing metaphor) idealism. It may work some of the time, but the edges rapidly become ‘gray’ (read: filled with injustice). To take a picture that shows all the colors and fine grains and blur it into a 2-tone, 4 block image? Injustice to the reality which God created, and injustice to your God-created mind which is capable of handling more than you let it.