Well, everyone else seems to be talking about theology lately on their blogs, so I figured I’d put in my 2 cents.

First of all, I have to say up front that I love theology. I love reading other people’s opinions about theology, discussing theology with my friends, pushing the envelope on both accepted Christian theology and my own personal theology - this all thrills me. I have my own little theological constructs that I think are quite fun. I am constantly striving to understand theology, reform theology, and yes, critique theology.

It is not theology I have a problem with. To me, theology is merely an expression of my study and love for the word, and trying to understand God’s revelation. The Bible is a theology book, because it is all about God. But there seems to be some rumor going around that there are people throwing out theology altogether. Now that’s probably true, but at least from what I’ve read on my friend’s and aquaintances blogs, I am not under the impression that any of them wanted to just do away with it all, but I won’t speak for them.

No, I say it again: it is not theology itself that I have a problem with. It is what man does with their theology that I have a problem with: namely, turn it into absolute dogma that cannot be questioned. Now I know all the great theologians were/are about reforming theology, and understood that you can’t understand God. But, the problem is, the people in the pews don’t understand that. I am not concerned with great theologians, I am concerned for the average Christian, who is taught that what they have been taught (someone’s systematic theology) is the only way of thinking. There are too many things that are set in stone and not to be touched, too many doctrines that fall under the category of heresy, to the people in the pews. Is it wrong to have a set of beliefs, or even a set that all works together into a system? Of course not. But only as long as the understanding is always there that that system, those beliefs, are open to critique. The average Christian will give lip service to this, and because this is what their theology tells them to do. But should something new come up against a belief - heresy! If not heresy, then you are plain wrong, and that’s that. Why? Why can’t things be challanged? This is the thrill I get from studying God! He is so incomprehensible that there is always more to be learned, to be included to be changed, radically! Theology is fluid, and should be. Your average Christians, however, wants to fight against new/different theological ideas, not dialogue with them - and “new” could mean old or even ancient ideas from great theological scholars whose ideas have gone out of style, or are not accepted in a particular denomination.

I get nervous when people say that it’s my way or the highway. This is generally speaking what people are taught to do in church, some more than others, and only generally speaking of course, no offense meant to anyone. Even pastors believe this way. Professors. And even some of those theologians, though perhaps to a lesser extent. There is no room for disagreement with my theology. If something disagrees with my theology, even be it a Bible verse! well we must have interpreted it wrong. Or maybe your theology is wrong? No no no…never. The Bible is wrong, not my theology. What! Well, that is what we make it - we have to “fix” the Bible because it disagrees with preconceived notions of theology, rather than gently exploring how perhaps the theology needs to change. Then we end up with the filling in of holes, and trying to “explain away” problem passages. Taken down a path of narrow-mindedness, theology becomes a box, and God joins theology in the box.

It is the close-mindedness, the dogmaticness, that comes out of systematic theology, especially, that I dislike. Explore everything we can learn from the Bible about a topic? Absolutely! But for many people, theology becomes the starting point rather than the end point. The Bible is compared to existing theology, instead of the other way around.

So. There’s my problem, and there’s my rant.

After pondering on Dr. Snyder’s most recent blog entry, I must say I agree that church is not a place that I long to go to. Quite the contrary; I don’t want to go at all.

However, the first question that came to my mind when considering this Psalm and the blog post was: does “going to church” = “going to temple”? The author of this Psalm longs for the temple; yet it is not necessarily the temple, per say, but what he finds there - God’s presence. Certainly God doesn’t live at church. However, he does live within his people. Is there some sort of equivalence there? Should I long to “go” to church because I am gathering with the many “temples” of God? Somehow that rings hollow, and maybe that’s because of my own experience with God’s people. I don’t think that “going to church”, ie. Sunday morning service, equals going to the temple. If anything it has to be the concept of church capital C that equates, not the form that church takes.

And I think that there is where my problem lies. Not with the idea of Church, but the way it is expressed. “Institutionalized” Christianity Dr. Snyder called it. In fact, I think I can sympathize quite strongly with the Psalmist if we can equate those two. I long quite frequently for true “Church.” The difference in the two experiences is that the Psalmist finds what he is looking for; I do not. I find God often enough, in my personal study and relationship, but somewhere deep inside I know that this is not enough. There is something missing, something that I really long for. And somehow this means I am missing out on part of the Christian experience.

I have used this metaphor before, but to me it is like chasing the wind (kudos to Qohelet for that one). I am always striving to grasp it, make it my own, absorb it into my life, but it continually eludes me. I cannot catch it, no matter how hard I try.

And then I ask, am I trying hard enough? Is it my problem, not the Church’s? Certainly some of the burden lies on my shoulders; I can’t stay home and moan that I don’t like church if I never attempt to interact with it. I also can’t take my past experiences, in which I have thrown my heart and soul into the “Church” and been very badly burned, and let those dictate my view of the Church at large. At the same time, I don’t think that I am holing myself up, and I really really am trying to maintain a sense of hope.

But there is something, something, something…that I am missing. I’m not even sure I can lay a finger on it, but there is a longing, a yearning, for something that I cannot find. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you are familiar with the terminology of the “The 5 Love Languages” it is as if my “church-tank” is empty, and there is no gas station that sells my kind of fuel. It is nothing so superficial and petty as preferences such as music choices, but something deeper that is just not there, or if it is it no longer seems available to me.

And that is another elusive point. At one point I enjoyed church, not just Sunday mornings but the whole experience. I liked getting together with God’s people. And there are others who seem to live perfectly peaceful lives with God and the church. Then again how would I know maybe they too are being eaten up inside by the masks they feel forced to wear.

But back to the Psalm, all this is nice but I still am not convinced that even “Church” capital C is equivalent with this psalmist picture of the temple journey. The focus is on the thrill of being in the presence of God at his dwelling place, and the “spiritual high” he finds there. Even were the Church to be genuine and obedient I am not sure that this is all you need. There still has to be a thirst for God. I find this in my study of his word and the thrills I find at discovering new things and discussing them with people. I don’t find this at church, nor with the Church, and somehow there is a worship for God that must find its place in the heart of the individual. I can have good fellowship but if my heart and flesh does not cry out for the living God, where is the point in that? The psalmist certainly encourages obedience and righteous living which is also an essential part of the believer’s life. Desire, obedience, and yes - gathering with the Church seem to be all a set of components that must make up my life.

This worries me, as now I am wondering: am I missing out on what could be a deeper and more fulfilling relationship with God because I cannot find my place in the Church? Because I feel unconnected, an outsider looking in, a stranger? And even more frustrating, what can I do about it? Meaninglessness, always chasing, never caught, always thirsting, never quenched, always longing, never fulfilled. I can ignore it for a time, but I always come back to it, again and again, and I feel helpless to change it, to ever find it.

Perhaps most of this is completely unrelated to Psalm 84, other than in my trying to figure out how the psalmist’s experience can be transferred to the Christian’s, but it is where my thoughts led me. When I read this Psalm, I will admit I think God, not Church. It speaks to something in me, but not the longing for Church. It speaks to my desire for God, and his presence in my life. I don’t know how a temple fits into my experience, but I do know that where God is, I want to be - even as a mere doorkeeper.

Psalm 84

1How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
2My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.

3Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.
4Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise!
Selah

5Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion. LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob!
Selah

9Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!

10For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
the LORD bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
12O LORD of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!

FORT CAMPBELL, KY. — Wearing leather chaps and vests covered in military patches, a band of motorcyclists rolls from one soldier’s funeral to another in hopes their respectful cheers and revving engines will drown out the insults of protesters.
Calling themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, they are made up of motorcycle club members who could no longer tolerate a Kansas-based fundamentalist church picketing military funerals with signs reading, “Thank God for IEDs.” Many soldiers have been killed in Iraq when roadside bombs, called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, explode. Read the rest…

After reading this article, I don’t even know what to say. I thought I had seen the utmost heights of Christian stupidity, but apparently I was wrong. At the risk of sounding judgmental, I have to say that if I were there, I can tell you who would be calling down fire from heaven to crisp who, and it sure wouldn’t be soldiers in Iraq.

I mean, hello. HELLO! If they want to believe that God is killing soldiers in Iraq to punish the U.S. for “harboring homosexuals,” then fine, they can live in their own fundamentalist little bubbles, but to picket military funerals with signs that say such like the above? Way to show Christian love! What bigoted, hateful…mmm…I could go further but I cannot lower myself to their level in my anger.

And all that aside, how can anyone say God is judging anyone for anything? Did he come down and speak to them in a vision? Is there a prophet in their midst? If so, did they ask him for a sign? I mean, this is the extreme of the same rubbish that people were preaching around the time of Hurricane Katrina. Do I deny that God could judge anyone he should so please in any manner he please should he so please? No, of course not. But to go around saying that you know for sure that he is! And then to take such a sentiment an extreme like this, and desacrating funerals in such a manner! And then to attach Christianity to it! No wonder we have such a bad name! No wonder Christ has such a bad name!

It makes me so angry. And beyond anger, grief; because for every group like this that goes around making fools of themselves in front of the world we are trying to reach, the reputation of my God is tarnished. I like to think myself tolerant of Christians and the wide variety of beliefs they have, but this is just going too far. They are dragging Adonai’s name through the mud. Whether they are or aren’t true Christians, those who see them will connect them with Christians, and by default, with Christ.

Since when does God judge the nations before he judges his people? If God’s going to judge anyone, I think he’s going to start with the American Church. That’s what I’d be worried about.

Psalm 113

Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord,
praise the name of the Lord!

2 Blessed be the name of the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore!
3 From the rising of the sun to its setting,
the name of the Lord is to be praised!

4 The Lord is high above all nations,
and his glory above the heavens!
5 Who is like the Lord our God,
who is seated on high,
6 who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
7 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
8 to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
9 He gives the barren woman a home,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 . Standard Bible Society: Wheaton

That is the sound of my head exploding.

I am generally speaking a fan of sci-fi and fantasy. However, there is one staple of the genre (espcially sci-fi) that every time I run into, I feel as though my head is going to explode: time travel. I just can’t wrap my puny mind around the concept. And to make matters worse, not every sci-fi series has the same concept of time travel.

For instance, take the Back to the Future series. In this, it is quite obvious that history is changable, because they do change it. Not only that, but it appears that there is a point in the line of time at which they jump back, for the first time, and begin the cycle, or as the professor explains it, create an “alternate reality” time line. In the second movie history gets messed up, and they have to jump all around and fix it. Oh, that one made my mind spin.

But on the other hand, take the second Dragon Lance trilogy, the Legends trilogy. In this one, the concept is that time cannot be changed. If you go back in time and do something, you haven’t changed anything at all, because in the past you did it anyways, and you are merely repeating what you have already done. (I can feel the pressure building in my head.) Only kender and some other race that I can’t remember have the ability to change time, because they were created outside of the flow of time (this is fantasy, not sci-fi).

But then there’s Star Trek. They’re always floating back and forth through time doing this and that, stopping the Borg, saving earth, all the stuff. It’s not quite clear whether time can be changed or not. They don’t explain it. I think the possibility is there, but time isn’t changed because the Enterprise always comes to the rescue.

And now, the most recent sci-fi/drama that Calvin and I have gotten into is Star Gate. Fascinating show, and I like it because it actually has depth and thought, not just people going around blowing things up, which is just pointless. But, we just watched an episode (we have Seasons 1-3 on DVD, we don’t actually have cable) where the team gets sent back to 1969 by a solar flare, and they had to get back to their own time. Except there was a note, and General Hammond knew, but he wasn’t a General, and then they went foward, and it was Cassandra, and Carter had told her in the real time, no their time, and sent them back! All this to say, that in Star Gate it appears that time is an infinite loop, because there always had to be the note in the past and there always had to be Cassandra in the future or it would have never happened…meaning unlike Back to the Future, my theory is that it goes on eternally, no point at which someone goes back or foward, they just always have.

Kinda like in HP book 3, the Prisoner of Azkaban - Harry was already there fighting off the dementors when he collapsed and saw himself, and when he actually went back he took the place of who he saw, and fought off the dementors. So he had to have already been there or he wouldn’t have been rescued. So he always was, and always had to be. Because he did. AUGH!

Bvvvvvvvvvv…POOF!

I guess I’ll never be one of those physicist people.

I found this article through Christdot.

“Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.”

It’s not that I disagree with everything that Ken Ham believes, nor that I personally take any of the many less “fundamental” ways to interpret the creation story. It’s not that I care that he’s building a creation museum or publishing lots of nice books and pamphlets or going around speaking. However, brainwashing young impressionable children into thinking that anyone who disagrees with this exact way of believing (nevermind the numerous ways of interpreting the passage that does not disgrace the inspiration of Scripture nor claim that everything came from goop) doesn’t really believe in the Bible, well, that’s just disgusting. I’d just like to congratulate Ken Ham on compounding many-fold an issue I already face in youth ministry: having to teach teenagers how to think for themselves again. Bravo!

I am currently reading through Jeremiah, and I finally came to this passage (Jeremiah 13:1-11), which I had forgotten was there. And I must say it amused me as much this time as the first time I stumbled across it:

1 Thus says the Lord to me, “Go and buy a linen loincloth and put it around your waist, and do not dip it in water.” 2 So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it around my waist. 3 And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, 4 “Take the loincloth that you have bought, which is around your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” 5 So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. 6 And after many days the Lord said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” 7 Then I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. And behold, the loincloth was spoiled; it was good for nothing.
8 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 9 “Thus says the Lord: Even so will I spoil the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. 11 For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen.

From my quick Libronix study of the word for loincloth (others, linen waistband) here, I see there is a slight variation of thought on whether it is more an undergarment or more of a belt (or maybe I’m missing the point and it’s both?). It comes from a root which means, according to my friends Brown Driver and Briggs, to gird, encompass and/or equip. Either way, it’s still rather odd. I mean…

“Okay, Jeremiah, here’s what I want you to do: Go and get yourself a loincloth and put it on. Then, take it off and stick it under a rock for a while. Then, take it out and observe how it is no longer good for being a loincloth anymore. What this means is that as a loincloth is tight to a man, so I stuck Israel tight to me. But since they didn’t listen, they are now ruined and useless, as this loincloth which you just put under a rock is.”

Let’s put it another way:

loincloth is to man as Israel is to God

Does anyone else see the humor in this analogy? Obviously in the context of what I’ve read up until this point, and the context of the passage in general, it’s not meant to be funny and really isn’t; the point is quite sad actually. But that aside, (and I think that’s okay temporarily, after all I can’t hide from God that I find his analogy here amusing anyways!)…a loincloth? I mean, a loincloth? He might as well have said that Israel was like a sock!

My apologies; perhaps next time I will have something to write more serious about Jeremiah (as it really is a good read and is giving me much to think about). But, for now - I just have to say how I am reminded that God is rather wierd sometimes…

I just recently received a W-2 for my first (almost) year of a real full-time job, and I have to say that I can’t believe I paid more into Social Security than I did federal income taxes. I’m okay with paying taxes, but…

What if I don’t want the government to take care of me when I’m old? What if I want to plan for that myself, as everyone does anyways? It frustrates me that there isn’t even another option.