"Heavenly Father...."

We were all sitting on some couches and furniture in an apartment - a group of us Christian guys. We were discussing what it looks like to live the Christian life and some of the struggles. At one point someone made a comment that made us all realize that often times our prayers to God revolved around requests for this and that. Particularly requests that God would help us in this or that situation.

This prompts a question in my mind about how we perceive God. I think that the frequency and content of our prayers to God is probably based, in large part, to how we perceive God. Perhaps the reason that our small group of guys prays the way we do is because we view God primarily as a problem solver. Does this reflect our predominately male dominated view of God? Male = Problem Solver

So, I ask you the following questions:

1) What is the primary way that you view God? Domineering father? A friend to chat with throughout the day? A benevolent grandfather? A God of vengeance and wrath who punishes the evil? An ambivalent spectator? Etc., etc., etc.

2) How do you think this view of God become your primary and dominant way of thinking about God?

I'm curious to hear your perspectives.

u r kewl

For some reason I've been on a roll recently with my comments about current western culture.....Today in a theology class our professor mentioned how he was interacting with a college student who had multiple cell phones. He gives this student a hard time because she has two cell phones for no conceivable reason at all. Well, actually there is a reason. After all, one of her cell phones is old (1 year) and the new one is cool - it's pink!

We are a very conservative college here at Grace, but nonetheless there are still many students grabbing up blackberrys and other cell phones of which they only actually need about 5% of the features. Why do they buy them if they don't need the features?

I think we live in a unique and fascinating culture where much of how we find meaning in life is dictated by our response to the media. I use the term "media" very, very broadly. Media is the targeted marketing and advertising that happens in our culture, which is huge but it isn't the whole story. Media is also journals and internet and television shows and movies and radio and the books we buy and whatever else. We are absorbed in media and it defines us. That's why students and kids buy things. It's not just about "being cool." I think that's too simplistic. It is about happiness and meaning and purpose in our lives. In churches we might tell our kids that they should find meaning and purpose in God/Bible/etc. however I submit that we are fooling ourselves. After all, most of these same parents are telling their kids not to believe the media because they heard something like it from a Dobson radio show or read it in a "Christian" book/magazine, etc. News flash: Dobson=media. And your kids know that you are influenced by the media just as much as they are. What you are really telling them is that there is "good" media (Dobson, "Christian" publishers, etc.) and there is "bad" media, which happens to be most of what the kids want to absorb.

It is too late! We are past the point of no return. Not only the kids, but we all define ourselves by media. No one escapes!

An inconvenient utility bill

Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore's environmental hypocrisy.

Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.

"If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care," says the Center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. "But he tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules."
[Taken from http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=nation_world&id=5073354]

Can't beat the real thing, baby

Three experiences and examples that recently illustrated to me that we are an un/authentic society. I recently bought another pair of jeans that was manufactured to look "old" and "worn" and wondered to myself why I didn't just go to the used clothes store and pay like two dollars for a pair of jeans that was already worn. This got me to thinking how our culture now wants to be authentic and genuine and earthy, but without actually going to the trouble of being authentic/genuine/earthy.

Experience 1:
This last Christmas our family was opening presents and I realized that we were all taking so many digital pictures and videos that we were spending more time capturing the moment than we were in actually creating the moment. This made me wonder how much of the moment was simply to have pictures/video and how much of the moment was the genuine experience of family and closeness.

Example 2:
Levi's® Vintage Clothing Vault I - 501®
We used to just buy a pair of jeans and wear them until they were worn out. If we had a nice pair of jeans that were new then we would look good because obviously we didn't have to wear worn out jeans. Only those who couldn't afford new jeans had to wear the old, worn out ones.

But now we don't want to look like we have "new" or recently manufactured jeans. We want to buy jeans that already look worn. Rather than just wear them out ourselves or go to the used clothing store and buy a pair of jeans that someone has already worn we have the manufacturer make them appear old and worn out. So, we want "new" jeans, but we want the "new" jeans to look "old," so that we can feel earthy, organic, and authentic. But, of course this does not make us more authentic. Quite the contrary. Can we really be any less authentic and any less genuine if are so superficial as to pay for someone to make us old-looking jeans? It might be the most disingenuous act of them all.

Here is the product description from the Levi's website:
We've based this 501® jean on an original from the early 20th century, replicating its hard-worn look and transitional styling. Made with belt loops, suspender buttons, back cinch and two back pockets. The medium-dark denim has rusted iron undertones and small paint spots. Arrives crumpled in a ball secured with an old-fashioned leather strap. Each pair is hand-numbered.

Example 3:
Water. We used to just drink natural water, then the water got polluted and undrinkable, so we purified it. Then we wanted to purify the water to get the bad stuff out and also add back the good minerals that we were missing out on. Now we want to purify it, add back the minerals, and doctor it up a bit to suit our lifestyle or activities. So, now Vitamin Water will make a water that fits your life:

...before now, the only way to get truly pure water was to catch a raindrop from the cloud, but since clouds are hard to reach (and not to mention shifty), a lot of water we drink comes from the ground and contains random stuff & whatever else the animals that swim in it leave behind, that's why we copied our white puffy friends by vapor distilling smartwater, but since we're never satisfied, we then one-upped the clouds by adding key electrolytes to help keep you hydrated....thus creating smartwater.

water that works every time. with fit-in-your-hand-ease, each one of our 12 grab-health-by-the-horms varieties offers a unique blend of nutrients to help you "shine" on those gods-have-forsaken-you days, yada-yada-yada conference calls, wind-sucking workouts and chasers-are-for-weenies nights...
[taken from http://www.vitaminwater.com/]

Movie Night

I watched three movies last night.


Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Funny movie. I like Will Ferrell, and he teamed up with some of his favorite cast members (see Anchor Man) for a good comedy. Made me laugh, but I don't know if it has the kind of comedy that would keep me coming back to watch it repeatedly.


A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Excellent movie! Based on the weird novel by Philip Dick by the same name. I had trouble working through the book, and then got sidetracked and never finished it. This is an animation with Keanu Reeves and other stars doing the voice. This approach, I thought, was fantastic for capturing the surreal and dream-like quality. The characters are interesting, quirky and on top of that they are all a little paranoid.

There was one scene that was that was better captured in the book. The four slightly stoned friends are trying to figure out if they were ripped off because they count the gears on their newly purchase 18-speed bike and find that they only count 9 gears! Get it, like, you can't count the gears to get the speeds, but the friends don't really think very well because they are on Substance D, a drug that destroys the brain.

This movie also raises some intriguing ethical questions about whether or not it is ok to sacrifice an officer for the greater good - without his knowledge!
Some say this is the best adaptation of a Philip Dick novel to date.

I also saw The Prestige a second time....but I've already mentioned this one...

A fragmented past

This is Perkins speaking of the ancient mindset (third century):
The traditional society of the ancient world resisted change. "The new" was no virtue. Its visionaries did not seek to bring into being a new and glorious future but to recover a revered and glorious past...Since people sought to recover the past, their tradition, and since they did not have print and electronic media documenting every change of style, they perceived much less discontinuity between themselves and their past than we do... (Pheme Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue, 4)

Interesting quote, I thought. It continues along my theme of the fragmented self in contemporary culture. That is, we are not holistic and complete. We are various fragments pulled together: work life, love life, entertainment life, religious life (which is often a pluralistic compilation in itself), online self, hobbies, etc, etc. We are a myriad of fragmented interests and preoccupations....Perkins here points out that in the ancient world there was a reverence for the past, in contemporary society there is an obsession with the future: We are anticipating the improvements that lie just around the corner, especially technological. Perkins also notes that when media documents "every change of style" there is a sense of discontinuity of the past. In other words, in contemporary society our historical progress is fragmented. A few weeks ago it was the Super Bowl, next it was the astronaut love-triangle, yesterday it was Anna Nichole, today it's Britney and her kids, etc....I think we view ourselves as more fragmented because we move so rapidly through history from one current event to the next to the next. History happens faster. We can follow a war on the other side of the world in real time. 24/7 media on the cable networks document every latest breaking news story with a deluge of commentators who exhaust a subject within a few short hours of its breaking. And, of course, within a few hours there is something else that follows.

Do we feel any continuity to the historical flow of our lives? We live from one event to the next, to the next, to the next. Our mass media outlets document "every change of style." We are a people in flux. Ever changing. Always anticipating. Breathless. We never stabilize and settle. We are always progressing, without any real time to reflect. It is progression without the stabilization necessary for genuine reflection. We process our events in hours and then move one. It is historical fragmentation.

Alternative = Mainstream

The following is a clip from an email I sent to a friend:

The anti-music establishment bands in Seattle sprang up in the early nineties to provide an alternative to the hair-bands of the 80's. The Seattle sound was more organic and original. They were garage bands that tried to produce something more musical and pure. Then they started to make it in the big time. They signed on to some big labels, and a little-known band called Nirvana became all the rage. They put out some big-selling cds and all the kids (myself included) were buying the stuff up as fast as they could produce it. And we all started immitating their clotes by wearing flannel shirts and cheap jeans that looked worn and tattered. Anti-big corporations.

Kurt Cobain commited suicide not long after Nirvana went big-time. After that the music companies were scrambling to sign anyone who could produce "that alternative sound," which eventually became its own genre, and now in a twist of irony the "alternative" to the mainstream is now mass marketed and has become the mainstream.

Life is full of such ironies!

So, my friend replies by emailing me this link to a Google video. It's the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit." So, it's about 15 years after the alternative/grunge revolution and now, not only has "alternative" become "mainstream", but the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is now covering Nirvana....

It ain't stealin' if you can do it....

This is so funny! I just came across an off-the-beaten-path bookseller (at Theos Project we cheer for off-the-beaten-path booksellers) who used my Amazon.com review on their site for their sale of Hermeneutics at the Crossroads. They must have just cut and pasted my review from Amazon and used it on their site. They even gave it 5 stars, like I gave the book at Amazon.

Here is the Link:
http://www.appliedepistemology.com/shop.php?c=bks&n=11072&k=Kevin+J++Vanhoozer&t=Creator&s=sr&p=1

I am truly and deeply humbled by the honor. I would like to thank the academy, uh, and god, and uh, oh yea, my mother, and my, uh, yea, my dad for all the wisdom and years of.............

The map makers dilemma

The map makers dilemma is how closely they want to represent reality on their map. To have a perfect representation of reality requires one to have an exact replica. If you wanted an exact replica of the countryside you would have to draw it perfectly to scale, and the map would literally be as large as the countryside that it represented. However, an exact replica would be impractical and unusable. In fact, they might as well not use the exact replica - reality, itself, would do just as well. Hence, rather than using the exact replica of reality you would use the countryside itself - the countryside becomes its own map.

Yet on the other hand, if the map makers decide that they want a scaled-down map they must sacrifice representation. The map becomes less and less a true representation the more that it is scaled down. The scaled down map is useful, even if it is less true. So, we use something that helps us navigate through the countryside, even if we must sacrifice correspondence. But the more we use something that is un-real the more we have a tendency to make the un-real into the real. That is, simply by using the un-real we are pragmatically finding it more useful and hence more real than the real itself.

In this sense we create a map that is un-real, and then by virtue of repetitive use and reliance we make the un-real into that which is more real.

When I am cruising around Chicago I use a very scaled down map to navigate through the streets. But I cannot rely solely on the map. If all that I looked at was the map I would soon find myself in a nasty car wreck! So, my eyes are bobbing up and down between the map and the streets. The map is the un-real simulacra. The street is the reality.

When I am lost and trying to navigate through Chicago I find myself in a state of anxiety. I am caught somewhere between the real and the unreal. The simulacra and reality. I desperately want to arrive somewhere that is real, but I depend upon the unreal (the map) because it is more easy to understand - it is scaled down so that I can understand and use it.

Realists and Idealists believe that the real is all we need. Reality is what we should strive to attain. Others contend that the unreal is all we need or desire, or at least that the unreal is all we really have to work with. These folks might say that all we really have in life are simulations and unreal things. We just fool ourselves when we think that these things are real or that these things are the actual truth.

This is somewhat mirrored by the Modern philosophical projects: Do we know "the things in themselves"? Kant said that we don't necessarily know "the things in themselves" - the nouma. Rather, our minds organize it's perceptions and leaves us with the "phenomena". The difference between nouma and phemoumena is, as I understand it, the difference between "the thing in itself" and how we perceive and categorize "the thing in itself." Hence Kant was consumed with how our minds categorize "the reality." But for me Kant leaves the question of our connection with reality hanging, and in this sense I see Kant as a sort of bridge between Modern and Post-modern philosophical thought, if I can use these terms in a very broad and general sense.

Let's return to my navigation through Chicago....

Perhaps life is more like a navigation through Chicago. We find ourselves in a state of anxiety. Consulting the map (things like Scripture, tradition, philosophy, psychology, or creeds) to find direction and trying to match it up with the real world in which we live. A mix of making right turns and wrong turns. Our "eyes" are bobbing up and down between the map and the streets - between the real and the unreal. This produces, for the most of us, a kind of anxiety. We are caught somewhere between the real and various representations of the real.

On this analogy, we are presented with four dilemmas.

First dilemma: "Which maps are the best?" We are saturated with viewpoints, worldviews, and various other "maps" that purport to represent reality. Yes some of them conflict, and some of them show agreement. But sometimes even if all the maps agree they still seem to be off. But are the maps wrong or are we just not seeing things right? That brings us to our second dilemma.

Second dilemma: "Are we correctly perceiving reality?" Maybe between all the bobbing of our eyes between map and streets we haven't quite seen the streets in the right way. Maybe our vision is bad, and we just don't know it. According to Scripture our view of things is skewed and warped by original sin. According to much contemporary thought we have conceded that we tend to have certain predispositions and presuppositions that warp our ability to see clearly. Our cultural backgrounds, family influences, and genetic dispositions are like glasses that cloud and fog our ability to see clearly.

This is a very real dilemma. Not only are we trying to juggle a bunch of maps to figure out which one is right, but we don't even have a good handle on whether or not we are seeing things clearly.

Third dilemma: "Where are we?" We can never rise above the frey and take a bird's eye view of things. Our perspective is limited to where we are right now. We start in a certain situation. Problem: We don't really know where we are at in relation to the whole. None of the maps have friendly arrows that say "You Are Here." Or wait, maybe they do. The Bible says we are all starting out in the same boat: Total Depravity. And that we all need to go the same direction for salvation: Through Jesus Christ. Ok, but all the other maps are giving us different arrows and saying that we are starting at different spots. How do we know where we are starting from?

Fourth dilemma: "Where the heck are we even going?" This is, perhaps the question that causes the most anxiety. This is, perhaps the least intellectual and the most existential question. But much of how we will answer the first three dilemmas turns on where we want to go in life. But then where we want to go will be determined by where we start and which map we accept as more credible and reliable. And it will also depend on how we perceive reality (second dilemma).

Exasperating!

The contemporary pop culture in the States says: "Make your own darn map!" On this view all dilemmas are eliminated because we all just throw away the maps and drive. Feel like slamming the peddle to the metal? Cool. Drive fast. Feel like taking it easy? Maybe smoke a little weed and relax. Fine. Soak in life and relax. The only qualification is that you can't hit anybody else who is driving around. For pop culture, then, we are our own map makers. We make the rules as we go! Use the maps only as it suits your taste - choosing maps are like choosing a coffee or tea - just go with the one that pleases your palate.

(This post is a replica, though not an exact replica, of a comment that I made over at ktismatics on a very interesting post, The Desert of the Real Itself. I altered it a bit so as to make it more useful to this blog and to the readers of this blog.)

What do you mean???

I was having a conversation with my friend, John Doyle, recently and he mentioned something to the effect that people don't seem to be concerned with finding meaning in life. By and large that seems true. How many people in this post-whatever world are really and truly searching for meaning?

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs bascically makes the point that survival needs are foundational and as one meets these needs then we can worry about issues of meaning. In the States our (I am in the Gen-X category) Grandparents were worried about foundational, survival things. Our parents moved up a bit on the scale, but still wanted to go after as much stuff as possible. Many of us Gen-Xers are concerned with relational issues. Building community, peace, and living in harmony with our environment, etc. This is a search for meaning. But still, is it really a search for ultimate meaning?

Do we, in this post-something world search for an ultimate purpose in life? I don't think so. In fact, I think this in a rather emphatic way. Meaning is construed and created by me and for me.

The Police - A reunion tour

The Police are getting together again for a reunion tour. I'd love to make it out to one of those concerts.

"Roooooooooxaaaannne! You don't have to put on the red light!"

Gotta love it:
"When young musicians who are trying to break into the business ask me 'how do I make it?', I say to them it's not important to make it, just keep playing music and its its own reward. And if you're meant to be a big star or not, well, that's just fate." - Sting

twenty five degrees

Dude! It's twenty five degrees outside. Considering the weather we have been recently having here in northern Indiana twenty five degrees is very warm! Time to wear the shorts and tee-shirts again, eh?