In The End

I heard a discussion on the best way to die the other day. I know a little "morbid ?" if that is the right word.  One of the individuals was talking about how we have come to the place were we as a society generally view deaths like going in your sleep  or without pain as the best way to go.  he contrasted that with the view that was widely held in medieval times that people hoped to be saved from a sudden death and wished for a long death, because it was not death they feared so much but God. That is if they had a long death, they had time to make right with God and their enemies or family. We have come to a place today where perhaps the scariest part of death is the knowledge of death, knowing that we are going to die is the scary part. We then do are best ignore or to mask the reality of death, we hide from it. "death then is what happens when the doctor can do nothing else." 

 It was a striking conversation to me (especially the fearing God part) and got me thinking so I thought I would share, sorry for the downer of a thought 

but  I have not posted in a while so...

Im thinking of killing this blog... 

I am more popular than I was

I have a face book account, (is that what it is called, account? or page, maybe??) and it turns out that I have more friends than I thought I did, it's great! If i had known earlier that it was this easy to make friends I would have signed up for face book a long time ago. "Good by loneliness hello friend list," the list of friends that never seems to stop growing, i am up to 58, i think. Its a good thing i don't have to spend any time with most of them, cause that would suck.

The Narrative

Have you ever found yourself telling a story, and about half way through it just is not going anywhere, So you deicide to spice it up and you add some outrageous ending that is not true. Like; "... then i pulled out my 357 which happened to be in my bag at the time and..." Ok maybe not. But we tell stories to each other, good or bad, and in the process we define the world around us. In our stories we express who we are and what we believe to be true about the world, about ourselves and about others. The hearers of our stories learn from and interact with our created realities and tell their own stories in response, and in addition to. 

we need to tell good stories, stories that expose the truth about the world in which we live, or else we are doomed to live a lie. 

maybe a little dramatic ? 

or more of a half thought? 

The Other.

{This is an old post that I had saved as a 'draft', I did not know that was

 possible, any way here it is.} 

 Communication theory has said that we develop a concept of our self by engaging with other people. We express ideas through symbols (words, body language) these symbols are interpreted by another person then returned to us, we interpret and then re-express... Though this is a overly simple and dumbed down explanation, the idea is that we develop our sense of self through interaction with the other. If this is true we need other people in order be ourselves. 

New Goal

I have gone surfing twice in the last seven days and it turns out that I am not as talented as I would have liked to think. Both days I was accompanied by guys that were much more talented, as  a result I found that I picked up 3 or 4 things that I could be doing differently each time, either by observing, messing up or the loving taunt of my fiend. the learning curve is steep and I am grateful for the practice in humility. 

It is now a new goal of mine that I should always be involved  in something that I am not very good at, so that I never forget to be a learner. Of course this is very easy for me at my present stage in life, but I like to think that one day I will be at least a partial  expert in something. Even when that happens I will continue to find things to do wich I am not even equal to those around me, so that I remain in a position of humility and learning. 

Free will

in answer to the question, how does the story of God hardening pharos heart effect our view of free will? 

 have heard it said that Pharo already chose to be against God, so the act of God harding his heart was not changing is will but letting him continue to act against God as previously chosen. 

that being one answer 

i think to more properly answer the question one would have to engage in the question of what are we actually talking about when we say, free will. in no way will i ever try to tackle that question, but it seems to be that there may be something to saying that God violated pharos "free Will" and made it impossible to choose anything but to be against God and the Israelites because his heart was hardened. with that in consideration,

The Bible does not tell us of another time that God has intervened in this way, or that it is something God does. But if God did what would it change for us ? I don't think it should change anything, except maybe increase our realization that God is God and we are not. 

i don't blog enough

i am now in two new classes this quarter, and they should be very stimulating.

that or they will kill my spirit and crush my ego because they will cause me to discover that a really am not the brilliant intellectual i imagine my self to be. 

 I have two nagging thoughts chewing on my brain cells at the moment.

one is having to do with understanding the bible through a narrative approach.

and two is the Question. What is politics? 

oddly enough the two classes that i am currently taking are titled, narrative approach to theology and political theology 

so i will now force my self to stop for the sake of lengthiness. but i hope to post more on these soon.