Waiting...

(allposters.com)

I saw the movie 'the Terminal' last night, and it was pretty good, but kind of forgettable. I think Steven Spielberg is kind of stuck in the late-80s, there were a bunch of shots with streaming light highlighting the characters - reminiscent of E.T.

Oh, and the movie is based on the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in the Paris airport for 18 years.

But something struck me - I think people outside of America have a greater ability to wait on things. Working in the computer lab last week, there was a tax help session for international students. Often, the people running the program were 15-30 minutes late in showing up and when I told the students that this was the case they shrugged and said that they would wait in the corner. If the tax program was for Americans, people would get pissy and hang around my desk and ask for information about who they could call.

Perhaps this is because America is a democracy and things get done because people complain about them. Maybe it's because we're more individualistic. Maybe it's because we don't have the normal 20-minute to 3-hour grace period of lateness that many South American and African cultures seem to have. Whatever it is, it's kind of interesting.

Life, it is.

As I am working towards to goal of defining what my life passions are, different words, phrases, and ideas seem to fit together to create the larger vision. One of them comes from an email that wasn't written to me by a professor at Covenant Seminary. It is a broad question that shapes a lot of who Covenant Seminary is and their mission. This question makes me want to go to seminary there. "What do you see in terms of spiritual yearnings within contemporary (popular) culture (in the U.S.A. and globally)?"

I was sitting in my 'Cultural and Intellectual History of the US' class this morning and another image came to me. In contemporary church culture, so much is made of Acts 17, when Paul is preaching on Mars Hill. I think Christians enjoy the image of Paul citing the contemporary secular poets and thinkers to make his own case for the existence of one God and for salvation in Christ. It makes the case that the church shouldn't be a fortress on a hill, separated from society by huge walls of distrust and misunderstanding. It should be a city, with streets leading out, inviting trade and dialogue.

It just occurred to me that that is what inspires me too. My favorite part of being at Mizzou as a Christian is being in a sociology class and being able to see the image of God in the writers and other students as we all discuss culture and the nature of man in society. It's fantastic seeing that what the Bible says isn't all crap and that what it says about human nature and the way God created us in His image can be seen in everything we do. Even the ways we set up power elites and have class warfare speaks to our desire to have the God-like power that got us in this whole mess in the first place (Garden of Eden).

In my history class, my professor acts kind of like an Old Testament prophet, highlighting trends of thought that shifted the American culture. I want to learn how to do that. I want to look at a culture and say, "Here is the foundational issue. Here is where we do not believe God." That would be so cool.

Capitalism: Root of All Evil

In my never-ending and constantly evolving journey to figure out what is wrong with the world (besides the obvious Sin), I'm beginning to look to Capitalism.

When my brother Steve was in college (or just out) we were talking about something like American culture around the dinner table (I can still remember where he was sitting) and I said something or other that I thought was a pretty original idea about American culture and he said "Well, that's because American culture is completely formed by Capitalism." I had never heard of this idea before and only had a vague notion of what Capitalism was in the first place and so just became quiet and still thought I was right.

Well, it turns out that I think Steve's right. At least I think so. I'm not completely sure, but here's a oft-quoted passage from Marx and Engel's The Communist Manifesto:

"Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober sense, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

The last part is bolded for effect; mostly because it's so dang powerful. I think what is so relevant is the phrase "...all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify." I think it speaks to the sense of temporariness in our current culture - especially in personal relationships.

So maybe our culture has just come out of our relationship with money. After all, that is where our hearts are. Jesus said: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Also, in the process of figuring out all of this I have seen more and more in my life how I actively participate in capitalism/postmodernism/etc.. What is this? Is it bad? Understandable? More on this later, but I've begun to read a book my mom gave to me a year ago while they were visiting me at L'Abri in England called Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God's Transforming Presence and which I haven't had an interest in picking up until last night. In the introduction it talks briefly about how part of taking a break from the world is to engage in Spiritual Discipline because it aligns ourselves with a different style of living. Interesting.