"They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience."*

I like that this is a qualification of being a deacon.


*1 Timothy 3:9

LOL Bible!!1 OMG

So you know LOLcats.com, icanhascheezburger.com, and the other versions of LOL catz? well, they translated the Bible. Find it here.

Here's John 3:16:
So liek teh Ceiling Cat lieks teh ppl lots and he sez 'Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleevs in him u wont evr diez no moar, k?'

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.

Blogging Ourselves to Death

I am reading 'Amusing ourselves to Death' for my Intro to Critical Theory class with Ronci. A lot of stuff in this book pisses me off because it seems too extreme, too apocalyptic. Life has gone on after TV and even the Internet, things are still kind of good and kind of bad.

However, this quote jumped out at me because of its relevance to blogging (the book was written in 1984, btw).

"The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraphy made information into a commodity, a "thing" that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning."

Blogs, anyone? And yes, I grasp the irony of me blogging about this. Neil Postman, the author, makes use of some Biblical imagery earlier in the book. He brushed against the idea that perhaps what God was saying when he outlawed graven images was that humans can't handle too many images, we need words. I don't know...

But speaking of Biblical imagery. Does this make anyone else think about the tower of Babel? That too much unfettered communication can be bad for a people?