Tag Archives: assorted virtues

Immanence

Posted on by under Misconceptions, Poems

Belief in God is difficult. I cannot see him.

If a tree falls, but I didn’t hear it, did it fall? If I cannot see God, is he there? How do I know I’m not in the matrix? How do I know I’m not just imagining my world? You say it’s God’s Spirit who is the author of Scripture, but how can that be if it’s humans who did the actual writing? Would I be a Christian if I was born somewhere else? Isn’t religion just an expression of culture? Everyone should just not be a jerk. Everyone should just be nice to others. Period.

Or so the conversation went. I added my own question. “If there are no pictures of the party, did the party happen?” Reality is three concentric circles. Starting with the largest circle and then moving inward, is the cosmos (κόσμος), in the second is community (κοινωνία), and in the third is the individual (ἐγώ). Who shapes reality? That is the Maker, God (θεός).

From Sin, Christ, and Salvation course taught by Dr. Robbie Griggs at Covenant Theological Seminary 2017

So what’s real?

Feel this.

My daughter,

moves us

around her.

Her hands,

still being

discovered.

Can you feel

Immanence?

We are all living in a time where nothing affects us unless we choose it. Or so we like to think. Why should how I live be motivated by others? The conversation went on; live your life with your choices, beliefs, goals, and I’ll do the same. “Of course there is always overlap, not everything can be separated so distinctly.” I added.

What is it to just be nice? What is it to hate rightly? Religion is at best a group of opinions one is brought up in to soothe the restless uncertainty of life, pain, and dread of death. But is it?

The historian Molly Worthen changed her belief not in fantasy, but in reality. As C. S. Lewis describes, she looked along the beam of light and saw by it instead of looking only at the beam. By the light, in the light, with the light, she saw things differently than before. Reality was not lessened to religious opinion, but grounded, resisting what we push away via our buffered selves.

Like music, a live performance properly performed will always be superior to what has been digitally separated. Like music, relationships are the most true when we cease buffering ourselves from others. Does my daughter have more strength than I with which she moves all around her? I don’t think so. Does she have greater intelec with which her mother and I are impressed to draw near? She is learning to recognize her own appendages, so no. How then does she move us?

There are 2 options.

First, we have evolved to cherish our daughter because of our selfish genes, which led to her existence, and so we are not really moved by her but by our selfish desire to see ourselves live forever. She is only a tool we have allowed to move us; an opinion.

Second, God made us personally for community with each other, and when we see her we hear the tree fall in the forest. We know more deeply than we know mathematics, that this is our daughter who is at the very least precious, and at the most eternal.

When she cries I A) am bothered because I’m living like option number one or B) am moved because this little one holds no property other than her immanence which God has made us to dwell with.

Belief in God is difficult to resist. I experience him everywhere.

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Floating or Shame

Posted on by under Fabrication, Misconceptions

My ideas are presumptions about reality, but they remain imagination until tested.

I try to create out of them, build upon them, and change with them, but it does me no good. Each time I try I have not made it. I’m no closer to reality. Nothing has changed. What good to me are these ideas? They do me no good and so I see, yet without reflection I’m back at it like OCD. So here I am.

Floating.

Hovering above the reality I see, my ideas mix as they look for a match where they might land. But I look down and there is nothing there. The color is not right. The shape is off. What am I missing?

There is something here…almost…it is so near I can feel it. I will try a different way.

Shame.

Ah, I see what I’m missing! It’s so clear! There it is! I can taste the color. It’s in my hands. True in a way I did not comprehend. Shame has brought me down to reality.

Wait.

My ideas do not match. They shatter on impact. I do not like this. Reality is so awful. How sick I feel…has my imagination been tested?

But without being above, I cannot reflect on it. Shame has brought me into the rough of it, but that is all it has done. My ideas cannot be tested without a view. I’m desperate to know is my imagination proving me true?

There is a place and I know it’s true.

I have heard of it in times gone past. I’ve sung its songs, danced its dance, and eaten its eats. Good as they are, we all know the best things come in threes.

Was I only imagining? Is there hope for when I’ve yet to reach my goal? What is my goal? They are both the same.

Reality is truth. Truth is reality. They cannot separate. Then what is hope? Hope is taking both in time. Hope is when imaginations ideas match with the true place. The true place comes down to this round ground. Better than a touchdown.

Truth does not depend on my floating and shame. Round and round I need not go. My distance nor my nearness cannot change truth. Truth stays the same. It is here. It is coming. Now and not yet.

New ideas are what is needed. No, wait. That cannot be. Because truth stays the same so what is needed cannot come into being. I must have something old, tested. But that is not quite right either. For just as the new ideas won’t do since they have changed in their coming into existence, so the old was once new and I’m back to where I began. What to do…

Perhaps I’m being pedantic. Often I am. An idea that is true will fit with reality and thus position my imagination even higher than floating yet more grounded than shame. An idea that is true will fit, not shatter, as it matches onto the map of reality.

Yes, this is the place and it’s true.

An idea new to me does not mean it’s new. An idea the ancients knew does not make it old. Truth is outside of time. But then how can I know it? How can I taste it? I can both know and taste it because I can taste and see in mind that truth comes from what else but its place: The true place.

I want to float above and get a look at this true place come down, but I fear the reason why is I’m able to live a lie. Safer to stay off the ground. Out of reality. Up in the air. But this is the same as being on the fence. I need not, must not, muzzle my imagination in shame either. I see now that while in shame I come into contact with the true place, my ideas are not true, for they are reactionary to shame. A reorientation must occur. What can I do with my shame? I’ve abandoned my floating, but the ground is hard and hurts my feet. This will take time for my imagination to catch up with how things really are. For the first time I see it; reality is truth and truth is reality. It’s a place familiar with here. It’s similar like the garden before the fall. I’m starting to remember the taste and color.

The true place has come. Now and not yet. It’s here.

No more floating or shame.

      Your most valuable possession

      Posted on by under Misconceptions

      Options options options


      Apple or Microsoft?

      Private or public school?

      Democrat or Republican?

      The red pill or the blue pill?

      Options options options.

      Yesterday I had one. Today I have two. Tomorrow I’ll have too many and I’ll wish I had a clue. I’ll wish things were simpler. Remember Blue‘s Clues? When I was younger options seemed simpler. Like everything was almost color coordinated up to the final curtain call as night would fall;

      Continue reading →

      Fictional Memoirs: Bad Christian

      Posted on by under Fabrication

      I’m a beggar telling other beggars where to find food.

      Real food is needed. Real truth is where unction meets function. Disciples will not be made until our pride is reduced like hide.

      Life is built upon life. Cheap tricks won’t save a life lost in a cave.  We won’t use banana splits or any other gimmicks that are only counterproductive and destructive.

      How many times will the youth pastor shave his head before he saves the spiritually dead? Continue reading →

      You Are Not Bored. You Are wicked.

      Posted on by under Murklins

      Think of the last conversation you thought was boring: the last person you quickly found conversationally deploring. What made you come to that conclusion? Take these next statements as a warning. 

      The self serving thoughts of “This person is strange” and “These conversations are lame” are an indicator of your self confirming loss: Loss of friendship and growth in the message of the cross. The same cross that makes sinners worth the cost. That cost that was paid for by Christ so that we may not be lost; may not be found wanting, but so that we may love without condition. And from this point we find our greatest commision. But we do not take orders well. So with blue blood in our veins we resort to vanity calamity. We call others boring and lame. 

      Confirmation bias becomes your 6th sense. Thinking of yourself in relation to others seems reasonable so long as you keep them in a well generalized fence. Parameters of socio-economic class like “They don’t have cash” and so you live past them because you are faster than them.

      If you find yourself bored every time you are in a room of people you do not know, perhaps they are not the cause. Look for the least common denominator. When you realize it is you do not expect applause. Your generalizations are not new. 

      You could continue to blame that boredom on others, but there is a better way to kick that conundrum. It is astoundingly better to take in simple joy, than to use judgemental fire as a time killing toy. The awful excuse that “you are either extremely excited or terribly uninterested” merely points to the fact that you are selfish. Do not blame who you are on your circumstantial inheritance. 

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      Look to make each person feel the love and interest you feel you so righteously deserve. Look to do a good turn daily. Look past your pride, wants, and even needs. You do not have to be a Boy Scout to do good. That action of doing good requires you to make others heard. That action of making others heard requires you to leave the burden of proof to them and not you. Do not make yourself the judge and ruler of who is cool. 

      Boredom is selfish. We choose to learn and know as much as we want. Do not stop learning about people and who they are for shallow reasons like,  “Are they driving a specific car?” Letting people be heard by listening to them is not the end goal though. It is from this point that we recognize the inherit value each person has being formed by the Potters hand. His mold is perfect and has been eternally planned. 

      All glory is deserved by God alone. When this is viewed as our main aim, as our only sustainable claim, then you will see that no one is boring. Your chief end is to be actively  along for the ride, enter into doxology, and give glory to the most High.

      There Is No Choir

      Posted on by under Murklins

      There is no choir.JPG

      To assume that the choir has been reached or to assume that the choir is not to be preached, is to assume that the choir is in correct and unified understanding with you. This simply is not true. As the idiom goes, “preaching to the choir,” I believe we should understand something: there is no choir. (Not in the sense of the phrase at least). Continue reading →