Category: Personal

I have been thinking about this scene.

I dislike the divide in Christianity of liberal, progressive, charismatic, pentecostal, conservative, traditionalist, etc. (Basically because I do not understand them.) Any group thinks it is the future by bringing the past into the present. But in the end are they all just interpretations? And so a party needs to come to power to have its worldview become dominate?

So the takeaway for me: it is not about belonging to a particular group or party! It is about being authentic in everything I do and say.

I was thinking about this quote today:

Kant was an interesting individual. Yet the above is, I think, a sound principle. I know that I have often felt like a “means to an end” for people – which, alas, I have allowed myself to be so the fault lies with me. And, I cannot control others but only myself.

So for today’s reflection:

DO I use people for the sole purpose of achieving something else?

I have been reading Fear and Trembling and Kierkegaard and Christian Faith. As is the case sometimes with me, both have raised similar ideas. Both have said something to me that I needed to hear.

I was really struck by the first article in the second book, “An Introduction to False Pretenses, Søren Kierkegaard, and Trying on Faith for Size” by Kathleen Norris. (As a small aside, Norris also writes an introduction to a collection of poems by Thomas Merton that I am reading.) In the article she makes the point that she is not a philosopher – not about making distinction. Rather she is a person that makes connections. A lightbulb moment: that is me! Some of the distinctions of academic philosopher make my head spin. But I naturally connect various ideas (without intellectually fully understanding the background or finer points of the argument) into something meaningful for me.

Fear and Trembling is written by Kierkegaard under the pseudonym of Johannes de silentio. In the Preface he makes the point that he is no philosopher because he is not a system builder. He is, rather, an outsider looking in. I have spent my life looking for the perfect system all in an attempt to escape myself. But I have always been the outsider who takes a position within the system not taken by others.

All of this made me think:

• I need to reject the labels of theologian (which I can claim by academic training and and experience) and philosopher (which I can claim by experience).
• I am no system builder because I do not think systems can define. Systems have no authority.
• I am an outsider looking in. I am simply an Observer who sees themes in the world around him.

A personal recommendation: Existential Christianity.

I have been reading through the articles, especially the author’s main thesis. I think his context is different from my experience and I am not as ready to dismiss certain aspects of the church as quickly as he appears to be. (That being said, I am not sure which aspect to hold on to!) It has, however, made me think!

So here are some random points for further discussion and thought:

• Faith as character.
• The problem of language.
• Doctrine and salvation.
• How to approach authority in a modern age?
• What is “revealed”?
• How to read the Bible and “listen to the Church” as a Single Individual?
• Sin and choice.
• Abstracted God and authentic being.
• The paradox of Jesus.
• Being human before God.
• Being “me” before God.

Maybe some could be combined?!