Babel

Hemingway would end his writing for one day by writing the first sentence for the next day, knowing how hard it is to start up. That's why I am writing short post ideas to build on.

Anyways, truth cannot contradict itself. If languages evolve, and they do--Ask any linguist or philologist--then we obviously didn't get all the languages at the tower of Babel no matter what the preacher at the revival said.

Ability to separate Content from Style

Artists have definite philosophies or worldviews that affect their art. But, Zhang proposes, be fair and do not dismiss them based only on their the content (unless you are a weak-minded hyper-impressionable follower). I am thinking of the great poet Wallace Stevens, that devout atheist and superb stylist. This post will evolve.

A Random Memory Deconstructed

Deconstructionism: A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings: "In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable, 'virtual texts' constructed by readers in their search for meaning" (Rebecca Goldstein).

A Random Memory:
I was the only kid in my family who actually liked going to Bible Memory Camp every summer. It was worth enduring the long sermons and the smell of pinesol overpowering the scent of pines, for the berry picking, paddle boats, and the possibility of a horse ride, if you were lucky. Picture a small-group Bible study outdoors about forty years ago...
A teacher, call him "Joe" tells his pre-adolescent students, "the 'mark of Cain' is the Negro color." One of my brothers counters, "No, it isn't."

Teacher then asks that brother,"How would you feel if your sister (me) married a Negro (word drawn out)?

Brother, "I wouldn't care."

Teacher, "I'll pray for you, brother!!"

Okay,now I'll illustrate deconstructionism: On the obvious level, the deconstructionist would say Teacher Joe brought his own interpretation to the Biblical test based on his own cultural racial prejudices. Right. So far so good. But then maybe the deconstructer speculates that my brother with his young, fantasy-inclined mind was really thinking about me being married to a negro in a symbolic way, say like a virgin being sacrificed to a dragon to appease the gods. In this scenario, my brother says, "I wouldn't mind" only because he wouldn't have cared about me being fed to the dragon, sheerly for its entertainment value. Or, maybe, he just didn't care at all about much at all and that's what he really meant. But since Teacher Joe didn't know my sibling was just contrary and primitive, he didn't think of that. (Nor did he think of anything else except for apple pie and pork rinds.) But further speculation yields the dark possibility that Teacher Joe interpreted was actually subconsciously thinking how interesting it would be for me to be with a black man! In this scenario, I am the white (innocent) virgin marrying Joe's own dark id/shadow side. Mmmm-mm. Shudder. Shudder. (Scarier than being sacrificed to a dragon to appease non-existent gods.) So in these interpretations, did my brother stand up for me or did he give me away to the dragon or did he give me away to Joe or to a real negro man or was he just weird? And was I still a girl or was I grown up when married off to the dragon, dark side or black man? And speaking of Cain to get back to the original text, Cain wasn't much of a "brother's keeper" and neither was Teacher Joe so Teacher Joe was a Cain-type, killing innocents while sounding pious, with a fake offering. See how I subverted the text in no time? That's deconstructionism. The only part that makes sense to me is that Joe Blow was pre-biased by his racist subculture to distort the Biblical text and pass on the prejudice. But hopefully you can see that after awhile everybody's so confused, in the deconstuctionist process, that they throw up their hands in despair yelling, "Anything can mean anything you want it to mean!" And that, my friend, is exactly what has happened in our culture. Freud should have stuck with his first love of literature, especially Shakespeare, and not married his views to literary criticism (crit. lit. sh#@). F Y I, If I really thought a negro spouse could symbolize a dragon or a shadow side, (I don't) then in deconstructionist land, I would be the racist bigot, which I'm not.

Breathe.
But, really, racism is serious issue. So why did I marry deconstructionism with racism? "To kill two birds with one stone." Now who came up with that metaphor and why did they? Was it Audubon who actully killed birds to sketch them? What kind of cultural prejudices could have influenced such an idiom? (Ad infinitum.)

A happy ending is coming so will this random memory be interpreted as comedy or tragedy? I guess it depends on how you choose to interprete it.

Need I mention the camp was segregated, that blacks attended a separate week? (Why would they bother?) Anyways, I was one of the only two who would memorize my whole book of verses to receive a gift Bible as the token black cook sang, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot..." (Bet that negro was ready to go home when her shift ended.) Anyways, the happy ending is that I thought for myself, read the Bible, found that it endorses love and equality, not racism. All this is the gospel truth, though what Bible memory camp endorsed wasn't.

Why I Hate the Bible commentary "The Message"

I have good reasons for hating The Message but I don't have time write them now. By coming up with the title of this post and the first sentences, I have committed myself to this future task. More coming. Later, tell me if you disagree.

Reasons not to be anti-science (i.e., "plain ol'" science without all the modern philosophical underpinnings of Science as Modern Religion)

This posting is going to get longer and evolve. For now, I refer you to the worthy blog, http://www.reasons.org, Reasons to Believe, Bridging the Gap between Science and Faith.

To jump in somewhere in the middle of a really old debate, I'll say first that in my formative years my parents told me that scientists made up the evidence for the earlier existence of dinosaurs…that they never existed. What do you think? More later.

The Emerging Church is the Merging Church

“The emerging church” should be called “the merging church.” While they pride themselves on their tolerance of all who are so tolerant, they allow anything whatever into the mix of their creed-less creed. And, of course, if you keep combining color upon color, you will only get a bathroom brown.

Plus, (sudden metaphor switch coming) while trying to make a stew of religion, they forget flavor-enhancing salt. Though their soup has many mild herbs of pop psychology thrown in, it remains bland and worthless.

From a typical Emerging Church website (emergingchurch.info.): “Whilst the traditional church continues to battle between the conservatives and the liberals, and between the Catholics and the evangelicals, the emerging church has been emphasizing the need for right engagement in context – or what has been called orthopraxis" (sounds like something old people wear!) rather than orthodoxy (right thinking)." Does this mean they are for Wrong thinking?! "It has avoided getting involved in this tennis match over orthodoxy. The emerging church has been focusing on ‘doing’ church in a post modern context, which is all about being and doing church in our liquid modern times" (veggie stew with nasty stuff thrown in) "which has created a new context of a culture of the spiritually restless and spiritual searching, or the openness of many to be spiritual tourists "(in other words, questions are "good" but answers are "bad," very bad). "Many emerging churches, have sought to draw on the best of the old and reframe it for our current post-modern context, in what has been called ‘ancient-future’". Now there's an oxymoron! Apparently merging churcers are supposed to be tourists instead of tennis players (tennis can be strenuous and there might be a winner and a loser. But Reality Check, Emerger Mergers, everyone is in the game. There are no neutral spectator tourists. And whatever happened to being in but not of the world? And what’s wrong with a tennis match? …Anyways, please accept the editorializing along with everything else if you are an emergent churcher, "the emerging church tries to hold to the tension of having a high regard towards God and the scriptures…” Is that so?! Okay, that’s enough already. What about that glaring, "I am the way, the truth, the life" verse about how "no one gets to the Father except through Me (Christ)" ? Countless such verses contradict the merging church’s orthodoxy that everyone’s going to heaven or no one. More later.

Rescuing Evangelicalism from Fundamentalism, but even more from the Lies and Fear-Mongering of Radical, Religious Liberals Like Spong and Bawer

In the last few blogs I was warming up to say that although I believe there are problems in Evangelicalism and many more in Fundamentalism, they have often been unfairly slandered.

I will critique "Stealing Jesus, How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity" by Bruce Bawer, friend of The Right Reverend John Spong author of "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism." The Bible needs to be rescued from the likes of Bawer and the Right Reverend Spong!

The worst you can say about select groups of Fundamentalists is that (mostly in the South) they have at certain times condoned racism; as a generality, they have tended toward being anti-science, anti-intellectual, separatist, legalistic, sometimes unskilled in Biblical hermeneutics--going beyond the Bible, and unskilled with language, misunderstanding the word "literal," for instance. I am not minimizing those problems, which are serious. I'm just saying, "Let's be honest."

The Fundamentals that Define Fundamentalists (among other things):
Inerrancy of the Scriptures. I agree, but this does not mean fundamentalists must inflate what is to be taken “literally” (to use a fundamentalist buzzword).
The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14) I agree. Why don’t we use the Apostle’s Creed anymore, except, ironically, at Episcopal churches in America that have given up their basis for reading it?
The doctrine of substitutionary atonement by God's grace and through human faith (Hebrews 9)This is essential for salvation.•
The bodily resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 28)Yes--this is essential.
The authenticity of Christ's miracles e.g. healing,[6] deliverance,[7] and second coming[8]I agree.

(I hope to back all this up in subsequent posts, not wanting to spout unfounded opinions like a know-it-all; and I hope if you think I am mistaken, you'll investigate further and decide for yourself.)These five fundamentals define a fundamentalist. I don’t have any problem with them but fundamentalists tend to go way beyond them.[5]