A Film Recommendation...

Hey there,
Sair and I just watched an amazing film called Reign Over Me. Basically, it's about a guy who's family was killed in 9/11 and now lives a completely solitary life and suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. When, by chance, his college room-mate runs into him (having not seen him for many years) they rekindle their friendship and a process of healing begins. I loved this film because it is a celebration of grace and, oddly enough, friendship.

It wasn't until after watching this film that I realized how little our culture reflects upon friendship. Whenever a deep love between two friends (particularly male friends) is displayed in film or literature, there is often a strong tendency to read homoeroticism into it (e.g The Lord of The Rings films). However, brotherly love is something that, throughout history, has been celebrated in the arts. Perhaps this phenomena may have some connection with our culture having no room for a love that does not seek to devour or posses its object. How sad...


How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron's beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.

Psalm 133:1-2

My God is so big, so strong and so mighty....

Usually metaphysical reflection, depression and lack of sleep are a combination to be avoided. Recently however, these factors lead me to an utterly profound experience which I fear I am at a loss as to how to describe.

It all began with reflecting on the nature of conscious experience after a mind boggling lecture on the German Idealist Fitche. Fitche stressed that all conscious experiences take the form of a consciousness of something. This lead Fitche to reject the existence of God, because a God who pre-existed the world could not have consciousness of anything and so could not have consciousness at all. This did not phase me at all as I am lucky enough to believe in a trinitarian God who not only can be conscious of himself, but also, in some way, embodies an interpersonal relationship. This did however get me thinking about the nature of God, and specifically what it means for God to be a person. This is as far as I can explain my experience in any coherent manner. All that I can possibly say is that I was laying in bed contemplating these things and was completely overcome with an overwhelming dread and awe at the vastness of God. I began thinking about the fact that before there was matter and energy God had existed for an eternity, that for him there was no amount of time, large or small, before the universe existed, because time itself had yet to come into existence. I thought about the fact that for God the billions and billions of years before even the building blocks of life existed were nothing more that an instant. I thought about the vastness and complexity of all of the universe and how it is the human capacity for reflecting God's character which surpasses all else in space and time in greatness. In short it was one of the most profound experiences of all of my years as a Christian. I am not sure what it means, how to communicate it or how it happened but I am very thankful for it.

This experience also gave me a new level of sympathy for people who claim that the vastness of God makes any claim to know him untenable. For many the very idea that God could be conform to any form of religious system is absurd, furthermore, many others believe that God is too vast to even be considered personal in any real way. Kant was one thinker that had this kind of understanding of God and the limitations of the human mind to understand him. However, unlike Kant, I can rejoice in Emmanuel! God with us! in the person of Jesus. What a fantastic mystery it is that this utterly transcendent God became utterly accessible to us in the incarnation.

Qausi-mystical experiences are cool!

That is all,

-dave

'Laughing With' by Regina Spektor

An amazing song which raises a mirror to the religious cynicism of the western world. Give it a watch/listen!

That is all.

The Centre for Public Christianity

I went along to the launch party for CPX (free booze is free booze) and came away quite dissapointed. It smacked so much of the "salvation through organization" nonsense so prevalent in our bloated western churches. I have, however, been pleasantly suprised and humbled by the fantastic work that this organization has been doing. If you are at all interested in apologetics I thoroughly reccomend checking them out here.

Here is a great example of some of the stuff they are doing...

On being wounded by a Nazgul blade...

'But', said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, 'I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.'
'So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, to lose them, so that others may keep them...

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Ring

I remember, when I first read The Lord of the Ring, being so dissatisfied with the ending. It seemed so unfair that Frodo didn't get to hang out in the shire enjoying the fruits of his victory. Instead, Frodo had to leave Middle-Earth because the evil that he had endured during his quest could not be undone in this world.

However, Tolkien was reflecting a deeply Christian view of evil. Once we become victims or perpetrators (and we all are both), we all become wounded in a way that will not be fully healed until Christ makes all things new.

I have been reflecting on this on a deeply personal level lately. Last week I began getting counselling for depression and was told that there is a high chance that I have post-traumatic stress disorder. While I am optimistic that through treatment I can greatly increase my emotional well-being, it is clear to me that, to some extent, the wounds that I have received in the past will stay with me until glory.

This, however, is the case for all of us. We are all wounded by the evil done to us and we all dehumanize ourselves through doing evil to others. But in the resurrection we see the first day of a new creation, a creation that is free from the tyranny of evil and death.

"Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

-Dave

Rowan Williams on knowing an infinite God...

Your thoughts?

Chesterton on tradition...

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

I am often weary when Christians declare themselves non-denominational or claim with bravado that "the only creed they need is the Bible". Traditions and denominations are important because they offer a critique of our current practices and opinions from a different historical context. I feel that when we divorce ourselves from the history of our denominations we silence the voices of the saints through whom Christ has been working in the world for thousands of years and we make ourselves victims of whatever the prevailing wisdom of our generation happens to be.

As Lewis says in his great work The Abolition of Man;

You cannot go on seeing through things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through' all things is the same as not to see.

I can't help but think that the modern trend of denominational skepticism, in the end, amounts to a type of doctrinal blindness.

Your thoughts?

-dave