Welcome to Joel’s Place
If you must order a fresh, flaky croissant and eat it in the car on the way to work, then don’t wear microsuede. Those flaky little crumbs stick to you like you were flypaper. They don’t brush off. They crumble into microscopic crumbs and brush in. Now you know.
After an awkward pause, Uncle Jim, one of my regular readers and steadiest commenters spoke up and said:
i think what you’re seeing in the lack of comments here is what i’m experiencing. i’ve read through this several time and don’t know where i land on some of them - so i think is a good thought provoking post, just not an easy one to respond to.
Thanks for responding anyway, Uncle Jim. Sorry to have caused an awkward silence; the main target of the original Cyber Inquisition post is the questionaire itself, because many of the questions were difficult to understand from the limited context provided. For example (all answers are on a scale of 1-5, from Agree to Disagree):
Salvation will ultimately involve an escape from physical reality. I wasn’t sure how to read this one. It seems to presume that physical reality was something which ought to be escaped, and therefore bad. There is certainly much that is evil in our present physical experience. But the New Testament also talks about a new heaven and a new earth, describes the new Jerusalem in very vivid, non-abstract terms, and speaks of a new body at the resurrection of all the saints. So there is much of what we now experience that we will escape, but I can’t get an escape from mere physical reality out of the Bible.
Jesus’ humanity was absorbed to produce one new divine nature. The notion of separating body, mind, spirit, soul is a very Greek, dissectionist idea. It certainly wasn’t the Jewish mode of thought. I lean toward the Jewish view because there are so many things in nature which, while they may have distinct parts, are parts of a single whole with somewhat fuzzy boundaries between the two. Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” Can you take me to a vinyard and show me where the vine ends and the branches begin? And yet it’s clear that when we refer to Jesus we are talking about a person distinct from ourselves, and vice versa. The use of the word “absorbed” is what confuses me on this question. I honestly can’t remember how I answered this one, and I’m still not sure how to answer it now. Everything about Jesus was divine. And he was distinctly human.
Jesus did not have two natures (human and divine) he had one new composite nature. See my response to the previous question. Perhaps I could agree to this notion based on the “Jewishness” of my views, but only with the caveat that this assertion could be used to support neither the notion that Jesus was not human, nor that he was not divine. He was both.
Only Jesus’ human nature died on on the cross. Man is comprised of a physical body and an eternal soul. When I die, it is the physical body that dies. If I go to hell, then my soul endures another death. For the record, I believe that Christ did endure hell; it was part and parcel of his atonement for the sin of all of us. This hell began for Him even before he breathed his last, for he cried out, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” There is no better description of hell. I also believe that this very fact shattered the gates of hell as he rescued all those whose place in hell was reserved, past, present and future. There is a part of Handel’s Messiah in which the spirits of those who sought to slay him exulted in their mockery: “He trusted in God; let Him deliver him, if He delight in him.” We know that God did not deliver Christ from death on the cross, so this deliverance must refer to the other death.
PS. I don’t know whether my use of the term “Inquisition” is offensive to any of my readers, whether they count themselves spiritual offspring of those who inquired or of those who answered with loss, agony or their lives. I certainly do not intend any offense to anyone in this regard. The Grand Inquisition happened a long time ago, and I don’t know anyone alive who suffered under it, nor do I know anybody who longs to bring it back.
From ABCnews.go.com’s story on Bin Laden’s latest single, in which he offered the US a truce:
But there was nothing weak about what he had to say.
Later in the same article:
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said it was a sign of weakness.
“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” McClellan said. “We put them out of business.”
I gotta go with Scott on this one. We just wacked 3 or 4 of their top guys in Pakistan. Now all the sudden it’s truce time. Sounds kinda weak to me.
Frankly, for strength of rhetoric, Bin Laden is being eclipsed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the last few weeks he’s denied the holocaust, proposed Israel move to Europe, asserted his right to nukes and kicked out CNN for saying so. There’s nothing truce about that.
Thanks be to Aldahlia who showed me the way to this quiz. I’ve been checked out by the Grand Inquisitor and I’m not a heretic after all.
You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you’re not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.
Are you a heretic? |
But before I exult in the image of God in me, it’s worth noting that I may be in danger of straying. I should be watched, and perhaps need more instruction. Here’s the waffle in my wafer:
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K-sra has a carnival of motivational posters going on on her blog. She doesn’t usually blog on the weekends, so I’ve posted mine here, as well as emailing it to her for inclusion on her site.
Hey! This means I’ve still got one more beer left! Moohaha.
Some people’s great ideas come to them in the shower. Not for me. When I’m in the shower I’m usually thinking that I’m late, and don’t have time to fiddle with the tempermental temperature of the water, so lukewarm trending to cold will have to do.
No, great insight doesn’t hit me until I’m in the car. I had a good one today. But I can’t tell these great ideas to anyone; I’d be like the only bloke smoking pot in the non-smoking section of a Denny’s restaurant. When I tell other people my good ideas, they don’t comprehend, and they seem a little nervous. But the worst part is that when I try to explain my fabulous insight to others, the greatness of the idea evaporates. It’s like a beautiful dream; suddenly I don’t get it anymore.
Today’s great Vehicular Hindsight was about the concept of story. I thought to myself I wonder if the characters in novels or movies ever feel like they’re part of a story? In the past I’ve always assumed that no, the great heroes don’t feel like they’re in a story. It’s just life for them, and usually it’s the rough life. Things are generally longshot to impossible odds for the protagonist when I wonder about these things.
But today I thought differently. Today I thought no, you know what? I bet they do feel like they’re in a story. I believe this because it is part of human nature to see ourselves in the arc of a story. We all do this. When we say that So-and-so is a drama queen, we mean that she tends to get wrapped up in the wrong story. She doesn’t see the bigger picture, and thus doesn’t chill out like the rest of us. Of course some stories have very sad endings, while others end in simplistic triumph. But it’s in our nature to look for patterns in the stars, and then to see ourselves among them.
C.S. Lewis said of the theory of evolution–in particular the notion of sentient man alone in a Godless universe–was his favorite myth. When I read that I wasn’t sure if he was being wickedly funny or startlingly sincere. But I’ve read enough of his writings to reach the conclusion that the latter is true. For as stories go, that one’s a doozy. It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy.
There is something about tragic stories that fortifies the heart, particularly if you’ve had any of life’s trouble. We fit ourselves into the arcs of stories we’ve heard. And at the worst of times, it is a comfort to think what an interesting tale this will make! My blokes will hardly believe it all as we crowd around our usual table at Denny’s, smoke hazing the space between our sad and tired faces, while we, wrapped shoulder to shoulder in our coats and tucked into our pie and waffles, onion rings and coffee, embellish a bit and wish the check would never come.
I wish I had a dime for every time this year I’ve scanned the movie listings, thinking to take my son to see a flim, and finding nothing worth seeing. And now this just in from AFP via Breitbart.com:
“Plunging movie ticket sales, after a string of uninspiring remakes and movie sequels coupled with an explosion of the DVD and video game markets, are keeping audiences at home and have sent Hollywood into a deep existential crisis.”
Am I the only one that finds this bout of…existentialism hilarious? Studies have shown that G-Rated movies are more than 10 times more profitable than R-rated movies, and yet G-rated movie releases continue to lag far behind the other rating types. Of the 940 films released in 2003, only 29 were G rated.
“It’s not just a slump in box office, but also in sales of DVDs,” Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., tells AFP.
These days the box office represents only about 20% of a film’s earnings. The rest is merchandise, DVD sales & movie rentals. G-Rated films win again: seven of the top ten performing video rentals of all time are G-Rated (the other three are PG). And when’s the last time you took your Saw II lunch box to work with you?
Hollywood is trying to walk on R-Rated water, immunne to the market forces which move $5 billion worth of DVD’s through Wal-Mart & Sam’s Club every year. As a PG-Rated Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella might say, “If you build it, they will come.”
Sources:
Plummeting 2005 box office sparks Hollywood crisis
The Disfunctional Family-Film Business
Yesterday it was Kerry moaning about US Soldiers terrorizing Iraqi children in the dead of the night, a job which he feels should be done by Iraqis (presumably he’s longing for the pre-war situation). That was enough for Chairman Dean. Today he brazenly announced that the US will never win this war. Finger to the wind, he says the Democrat position on the war is coalescing.
Dean is just sure that this is Vietnam all over again. But the scary thing about Dean and his party is that when they look back on Vietnam they have not learned its lessons. The Tet offensive was a bust for the Viet Cong. Later they admitted to the world that they were hanging on by a thread, with little more to sustain them than the hope that the American Media would do the job assigned to it from Moscow.
By any sane standard of measurement, the situation in Iraq is excellent. We trashed their military capability. We caught Sadaam and he is now making an buffoon of himself at trial. The Iraqi people (including women) voted in a new government and a new constitution. All while maintianing a casualty rate that is phenomenally low.
But Dean would have us do Iraq like we did Vietnam: a round of Jane Fonda-style photo ops, followed by a strategic redeployment of our tail between our legs. How did this political party become so invested in the shaming of their own country?
I saw the movie “Walk The Line” a couple nights ago, and had similar thoughts to those of St. Kansas: something along the lines of “Oh, we forgot to mention, Buzz Aldrin was also an astronaut.
It’s not that they wove any fabrications out of whole cloth, but gosh, there was plenty of lint. The movie makes out that Johnny kicked the pills because of June’s gentle berry-pickin’ love, which helped him to finally find the courage to tell his dad off for for being so mean when he was a boy. That’s when he learned to believe in himself, and He-man’s sword got all glittery and they headed back to Opry City to save the day, A-team style, like.
When I want Johnny Cliff Notes I’ll watch Dawson’s Creek or 90210 reruns. Cash was complex. This movie was nice and sanitized of any substantive trace of Cash’s Crusade connection and the life which brought about his friendship with Billy Graham. And what about the time when Cash got lost in a cave? Sheesh.
Imagine my disappointment this way: suppose they did Lord of The Rings as a half-hour telethon hosted by the former child actor who played Doogie Howser. Add some batman-style screen wipes and a cameo for Peewee Herman and you get a sense of the loss I feel. Hollywood, you can’t handle the truth.
The above logo was copped as a screen capture from www.eigelb.at. Its a java applet created by Paul Schmidinger. Thanks, Paul. Sucker.
