Archive for March, 2008

Doubting Thomas, You Go

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

This guy wants evidence. How refreshing. He’s someone we can actually imagine emulating. Don’t just tell me, he says, show me.

Don’t we want evidence for everything around us. It’s our scientific worldview. We expect to see evidence we can rely on before we take on new jobs, new responsibilities, new ideas. In evidence we trust. But do we bring it to our church, our faith, our prayer? If we pray and don’t ask for results, what’s the point. “Ask and it shall be given”

Are we afraid to ask God, “Where’s the beef?” God might answer, and that’s pretty scary. Jesus certainly did. “Here, stick your finger in this!”

Follow this Doubting Thomas.

And what of those “who have not seen and yet believe?” What evidence have they, we, seen. I guess we just have to be that evidence. Like Doubting Thomas.

Luddite

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

I think I am a Luddite. Not to IT, Information Technology, but to Entertainment Technology. I don’t watch any television, I don’t get to movies. And the television on the MARTA buses here in Atlanta bothers me. After all I am trying to read and learn on the bus. My hunger is to be informed, not entertained, to understand what is going on, not be be distracted from it or anaesthetized to it.

What’s more, all th entertainment comes with advertisements. those need smashing. They tell me what to need, what to want. I am perfectly able to discern that for myself. Their voice insidiously tries to convince me that I don’t, that I am a child, that I need to eat from their tree of knowing what is good and what is not. “you are not good,” they say, “unless your eat of our fruit, our product.” Damnation!

Reading an Apocalypse

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

_Solstice_ by Ulises Silva is an apocalypse, very bloody and
violent, about all the evil we humans are doing, about a
threat to rub out all humans, to cleanse the world. As
such, it is also a meditation on the source of evil and
its redemption. It is connected as well to the philosophy
of language and language mysticism. It depicts writing that
effects what it describes.

Enjoyment might not be the right word but I did appreciate
reading it. I do recommend it. I guess its genre is science
fiction/fantasy.