Tracydanger

For the longest time, I've been wondering, "Why is twitter so popular, how is it valuable?" My assumption has been that it was basically for people that were hyper-self-absorbed. I've been doing some research because I wanted to utilize it for our Prelude ministry.

Using TweetDeck, I finally discovered a good use. Since you can create a column for different feeds using search terms, I created one with the search "preterist OR preterism OR eschatology"

Now, every time there is a tweet with any of those words, it shows up in that column. This function basically allows you to automatically create your own forum/community on any topic of interest. Since creating this search, I've started to become part of the conversation. I've suggested planetpreterist to a few people; started having to answer questions about my beliefs regarding eschatology.

The pendulum swing in the last quarter century (from my perspective) has headed toward the apex of “grace” as opposed to “Hell, fire & brimstone.” Not such a bad thing, right?

Of course, we can’t forget the idea, “What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning all the more? By no means!” but with our human-ness it is hard not to separate actions from consequence. This works both ways. Not only that it’s hard to accept that even though we sin, we can be in God’s good grace (certainly by definition, if we didn’t sin, we wouldn’t need grace), but it is also hard to connect that if we’re forgiven of sin, we still need to keep from sinning. I guess the word for feeling like we’re free to sin while in grace is licentiousness.

So the question I had on the way to work this morning was, “How do we emotionally reconcile the idea of grace with the fact that it’s not OK to be bad?”

I just received a "Census" in the mail from the Republican National Committee. If you also received one, I hope you didn't bother to fill it out or to send money. I opted instead to send this letter back in the enclosed, postage-paid envelope:

Dear Fellow Republican,

I am a 30 year old male. I am quite conservative fiscally and socially. I am almost finished with a PhD.

I saw this Republican Party Census Document as a sad and thinly veiled way to raise money. At the most it was a way to convince people of what they should believe, but mainly it seemed obvious, with the biased language used, that you expected people to answer “yes” to most questions.

To preface the “census” with a letter that used phrases like “ gun grabbers” was not civilized. I actually agree with most every sentiment in the letter, but it insults my intelligence for it to be presented in this manner. If you had simply asked for money to help the republican cause, I would’ve been more likely to donate, but I won’t support an effort like this.

A question [on the survey] like “Should republicans in Congress oppose the new wasteful government spending programs proposed by the Democrats and their leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?” sounds more like a smear tactic than an honest question.

This doesn’t make me like the Republican National Committee more.

-Tracy Hall

That pretty much states how I felt about the mailing I received. I wonder how others that got this reacted to it.

It seems that boys have an innate desire to build things and then destroy them. Think about how fun it is to build up blocks and then bust them down. Trying to build a tower as tall as you can and then bust through it. Setting up dominoes to see them fall, those fake bricks used to build a house and then tear through it. Link-n-logs, Jenga blocks, Legos, etc. Just think how many times you've watched a kid (usually boys) do that very thing. Some even grow up to work in demolition and what guy doesn't think it's cool to watch a video of a giant building being blown up? Like some big casino in Las Vegas. Of course, buildings like that are torn down to make room for something bigger and better.

Time travel back to when God ordained the building of the temple. How magnificent was that? Nothing has ever compared to it's majesty. The great care taken to make it. No noise made at the building site, intricate detail, gold-lined everything, etc.

We should be able to identify with such a powerful message/illustration when, first, the curtain was torn and then ultimately, the temple (not to mention the Jewish system and all it had been built up to be) was destroyed in 70 AD. What a dramatic spectacle to usher in the new House. What a great way to let all the world know that they too can have a relationship with God and be saved by grace through faith, no longer bound by the law (Gal 2).

Would anyone else like having podcasts of the different talks at Truthvoice? There is a podcast from a conference called TED Talks that I've found enjoyable, which makes me wish there were some from Truthvoice. It'd be cool if there were podcasts posted once a week or so including past conferences. It would probably end up drawing more people to future conferences and it'd be a great tool for people wanting to share there eschatological views. Also, for everyone that went to one session in one room and didn't want to miss the session from the other room - they could just catch it on the web later. I'm sure it would make it to #1 on the iTunes podcast charts.

Laying in bed the other night, I decided something.

I don't think that robots will ever take over the world.
My reasoning?

Computers are predictable.
Humans are unpredictable.

I could go into a more detailed explanation, but I think that this is what it ultimately comes down to.

Your thoughts?

I just thought about something recently.

Do you think you could take a broken egg and make it whole again? Even with your skill as a human, you'd have a hard time and it wouldn't look the same afterwards anyway.

Now, what if you were a horse. Just hooves. No fingers or opposable thumbs. Probably not very good hoof-eye coordination. Would it be any wonder that you couldn't complete that task? Of course not. Not even if you were a horse of royalty.

So is it any wonder that all the kings horses (along with all the kings men) couldn't put humpty dumpty back together again? Why even mention it in the first place?

Here are some more thoughts responding to comments from my earlier blog about inviting sinners to champion the cause of Christ instead of championing the cause of sinners. After reading several comments, I wanted to make the following response. Humourusly enough I was spam blocked from my own blog, so I had to make a separate entry.

Christians get criticized for putting homosexuality in a separate category. Remember there is the idea of homosexuality and also homosexual acts. A tendency (for whatever reason) or temptation is not sinful. A recovering alcoholic, not getting drunk, labeling himself/herself an alcoholic is different than someone saying that there is nothing wrong with getting plastered every night. The reason homosexuality is treated different is when someone gay or lesbian says that there is nothing wrong with it (i.e. openly living in sin). That's it (not that I'm saying anything new). Someone openly living with an affair or having premarital sex should be treated the same as someone doing homosexual acts or openly living in any sin. Somehow, we don't mind accepting sexual sin as much as long as it's heterosexual.

I've had several gay friends. I loved and accepted them. I didn't encourage that lifestyle. According to much of the mental health field, simply because I believe homosexual acts are a sin, I'm a "homophobic" - which is flat wrong. A homophobic is someone deathly afraid to be close to a homosexual for fear that, for instance, they may turn homosexual themselves. In today's climate, simply not being tolerant enough equals homophobic.

In response to another comment. 'We gotta get them in the door'. Not that I disagree, but my first reaction was - 'I gotta get out there'. People aren't a piece of dough that need to be thrown in the oven for 30 minutes on 350 degrees. Suggesting to someone (and/or inviting them) that they attend Sunday morning worship (hoping that they'll get their act together as a result) is wholly different than being involved in their lives - on a regular basis.

I sin plenty in my life. I don't consider myself better than anyone else. I only hope that I recognize sin, call it what it is, and try not to do it - relying on God's grace. According to many, that is enough to be labeled a homophobe.

I know the discussion of postmodernism could get very long I just want to mention one particular issue.

I usually don't like discussions of modern/postmodern philosophy. I often feel that people seem pretentious when talking about it (which is judgmental on my part - actually it seems that most people using the word pretentious seem pretentious - specifically because they're using the word pretentious - but I digress).

In discussions of postmodernism and the church I usually had a metaphorical bad taste in my mouth and never quite knew why. I just realized recently what it was.

It seems that it is unbeknownst to lots of younger Christians that discuss postmodernism that much of that philosophy is tied to the idea of no absolute truth. I hear people talking about how this generation has a postmodern philosophy and we essentially need to embrace that. I think the way to word it is that 'we need to embrace the fact that there are many people coming from that perspective and if we approach them from another perspective without that knowledge, then we'll be talking to the wind'.

There are many ideas inline with postmodernism that I agree with - such as the fact that I learn much better in a discussion oriented class than I do in a lecture. I just want to make sure that people discussing postmodernism and the church have a decent background for the term. Below this article I copied and pasted sections from Wikipedia about Social Constructionism and Social Constructivism to give a glimpse of the thought world of this subject. If I understand correctly (from my study in grad school - not from the excerpts below), one says that there is no absolute truth and all knowledge is socially constructed, whereas the other states that there is an absolute truth but we cannot know it absolutely because of our human limitations and, in a sense, we live in the world we create. I agree with the latter of these two perspectives. I believe in absolute truth. I also believe that if I tell myself, "It's gonna be a crappy day," then, in fact, it will be a crappy day.

I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts about this. I know there is a lot more to know about modernism/postmodernism/etc. than I know. Feel free to read the excerpts below, and since they're from Wikipedia, feel free to take them with a grain or two of salt.

Social Constructionism:
Socially constructed reality is seen as an ongoing, dynamic process; reality is re-produced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it. Berger and Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. When people interact, they do so with the understanding that their respective perceptions of reality are related, and as they act upon this understanding their common knowledge of reality becomes reinforced. Since this common sense knowledge is negotiated by people, human typifications, significations and institutions come to be presented as part of an objective reality. It is in this sense that it can be said that reality is socially constructed.

Within social constructionist thought, a social construction (social construct) is an idea which may appear to be natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society. The implication is that social constructs are in some sense human choices rather than laws resulting from divine will or nature. This is not usually taken to imply a radical anti-determinism, however. [citation needed]

Social constructionism is dialectically opposed to essentialism, the belief that there are defining transhistorical essences independent of conscious beings that determine the categorical structure of reality. The specific mechanisms underlying Berger and Luckmann's notion of social construction are discussed further in social construction.


Social Constructivism:
Constructivism is a recent development in philosophy which criticizes essentialism, whether it is in the form of medieval realism, classical rationalism, or empiricism. It originated in sociology under the term social constructionism and has been given the name constructivism when referring to philosophical epistemology, though constructionism and constructivism are often used interchangeably.

Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed", because it does not necessarily reflect any external "transcendent" realities; it is contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender are socially constructed (Hegel, Garns, and Marx were among the first to suggest such an ambitious expansion of social determinism).

There seems to be a movement in the church today related to tolerance/acceptance of certain groups of people - and sinners in general.

I agree wholeheartedly with the line of thinking that Jesus spent much time with sinners and it is legalistic to shun or avoid people because of the sin in their lives. But something hit me the other day:

There is a big difference between

1. Championing the cause of sinners

and

2. Inviting sinners to champion the cause of Christ

We need to focus on the latter.