Annoyances - Simplification

I think as you age, you come to learn more about yourself. You come to realize your own weakness and limitations more and more. Not only that, you also come to conscious realization of what it is that annoys you. I have come recently to recognise one of these 'annoyances' of mine: failure to take into account complexity. Let me explain.

Whenever someone talks about something without recognising and taking into account the complexity of whatever they're talking about, I find myself getting annoyed. This is especially so if I actually have some sort of knowledge about the subject, or when I have a personal investment in the subject. Lets take politics as an example. When people explain politics with broad brush simplifications, it bugs me. Folks regularly criticise the President of our neighbours down south. Now I have my own criticisms of George the 2nd, but I have come to realise you can't simplify the situation he is in. When you run the most powerful nation in the world, your decisions carry weight. Every move, every decision, ever word you say is criticised, publicised, and dissected. Perhaps we need more often to place ourselves in the shoes of 'the other' (go and read Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Wolf - a theological reflection on reconciliation by someone who had to deal with the Serbian/Croatian civil war). Now, if you know me, you wouldn't expect such words to come out of my mouth regarding Bush. But I guess people mature, and my distaste for simplification has driven my approach to change. Of course, I still don't support most of Mr. Bush's policy, but I respect him as a person and recognise the incredible pressures he must be under. I recognise the complexity of running the world's most powerful nation.

How about another subject I hold near-and-dear: biblical studies. Whenever I come across a comment, sermon, book, whatever, touching on biblical studies, my ears perk up. And whenever I start to notice somebody steamrolling the complexities out of the way, I get annoyed. Example, someone picks up a Gospel and start saying, "this is what Jesus said". Well, no. First off, Jesus didn't speak Greek (not as his primary language at least). Second off, Jesus never wrote a word of the Gospels himself. We have the words of Jesus (in Greek) according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Thirdly, following from the second point, each Gospel author is an author (imagine that!): they each have their own perspective, their own intentions, and their own understanding of Jesus which they put to writing. I think you can see the complexity of such a simple thing as 'what Jesus said'. Now, I *do* think you can say, "Jesus said such-and-such", but not through red-letter-bible simplification. And, as is often the case, recognising the complexity will likely better help you understand the text in question! Isn't that interesting, learning what Mark was up to might actually help you understand his portrait of Jesus better. Amazing.
Of course we have to simplify for evangelisms sake (to different degrees depending on the context), but when you keep feeding those same simplifications to Christians over and over again, you're effectly saying they're too stupid for reality. Reality is a complex thing. Go ask the quantum physicists, go ask microbiologists, go ask the psychologists. And I truely believe that the Christian faith is one that must always engage with reality. If it has any claim to truth, it holds that claim in the very real and very complex place we call our universe.

Want to know the sad thing? I am 100% likely to be guilty of the very thing that annoys me. I probably simplify situations all the time. I undoubtedly steamroll over complexity without a twitch...Didn't somebody once say we project on others our own weaknesses? I don't doubt it.

Anywho, me and simplification aren't good friends right now. Maybe later in life, when I mature some more, I'll find a way back, but who can predict such things.
I'd love to hear some comments. But do realise that Blogs aren't academic essays; they're more like a record of the free-flowing thought going on between the ears. Be merciful.

charis humin kai eirene apo theou patros hemon kai kuriou Iesou Christou
Grace to you, and peace from God our father and our Lord Jesus Christ

No Future Without ...

I picked up Desmond Tutu's book No Future Without Forgiveness from the library a few days ago. I've been meaning to read this book, and having made my way half way through, I know I've picked an incredible book.

For now I just want to leave a few extended quotations (and minor commentary) that really got my juices stirring.

The first comes from page 43:

When the new dispensation came into being, Terror [Patrick Lekota] was elected Premier of the Free State, one of nine provinces into which South Africa was divided. (He gained his nickname not for his political activity but for his prowess on the soccer field.) When he came to greet our Synod of Bishops, which was meeting in his province, he spoke warmly and appreciatively of the work of the churches in South Africa, particularly about their role in education. Nearly all the leaders in the black community had been educated in church mission schools. When we asked him why he was so dedicated to reconciliation and to being willing to make concessions to his opponents, he did not hesitate to say that it had all been due to the influence and witness of the Christian churches. This was echoed by Tokyo Sexwale, the first Premier of the leading industrial province of Gauteng, when he too came to greet our synod as it was meeting in his province.

Could you imagine someone in North America saying something like that about the Churches out here? It just baffles me. Out here people can't find enough reasons to bad-mouth the Churches. And a large part of me can see why.

Here's a snippet from earlier on, page 31:

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, "Yu, u nobuntu"; "Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu."...It is to say, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bundle of life. We say, "A person is a person through other persons." It is not, "I think therefore I am." It says rather: "I am human because I belong. I participate. I share."...What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me.

This way of looking at humans holds a close correspondence with something Rikki Watts (Professor of New Testament at Regent College) often says: 'We are defined by our relationships'. He challenges people to try and see who they are apart from all their relationships. His challenge got me: my language was given to me by my parents and teachers; everything I know about this world was passed on to me by others; every category I use to understand the world uses the language passed on to me by others and the ways of thinking I learned from others. I don't mean to be reductionistic, but its very true that our relationships are central in defining who we are. Interesting link with Biblical Theology there (go figure, NT professor) which I won't touch right now.

Finally, I quote at length Tutu's quotation of Mary McAleese, President of the Irish Republic, describing Gordon Wilson's reaction to the killing of his daughter (pg. 157):

It is a rare person who arrives at that state of perfect spiritual serenity. I suppose they are saints of sorts, not necessarily beatified and canonised saints but the kind of people in whose presence we intuit the nearness of God because they bring their best friend everywhere with them. God does not accompany them as a bodyguard or go in front of them like a Soviet tank clearing a path. He accompanies them like a soprano's pure voice accompanies a song, like a dewdrop sits on a rose.
One such was Gordon Wilson. He was a man so practised in the discipline of love that when his beautiful daughter Marie died, hard and cruelly, at the slaughter that was the Enniskillen bombing, her hand in his as she slipped away, the words of love and of forgiveness sprang as naturally to his lips as a child's eyes are drawn to its mother. His words shamed us, caught us off guard. They sounded so different from what we expected and what we were used to. They brought stillness with them. They carried a sense of the transcendent into a place so ugly we could hardly bear to watch. But he has his detractors and unbelievably his bags of hate mail. How dare you forgive? they shouted. What kind of father are you who can forgive your daughter's killers? It was as if they had never heard the command to love and forgive anywhere before. It was as if they were being spoken for the first time in the history of humanity and Christ had never uttered the words, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." As one churchgoing critic said to me on the subject of Gordon Wilson, "Sure the poor man must have been in shock," as if to offer love and forgiveness is a sign of mental weakness instead of spiritual strength.

What can I say...what incredible love and forgiveness.

With God in Hell

It has been a while since I've dropped a blog - the flu does that to a man. Four days without solid food will show you a new meaning to the word insanity.

Anyway, today's entry is about genocide. Last night I was up watching PBS and they had a special on the Holocaust. After a couple hours of watching it I just couldn't take anymore. Now mind you I have seen the worst of gory movies and psychological thrillers, but two hours of this special had me more upset and sick than anything on TV ever has. The show was describing the developments in mass murder techniques the Nazi's undertook. Starting off in the early war with shooting people alongside hills so that their dead bodies would roll into a ditch, to putting people in sealed rooms and pumping car exhaust in till everyone died in late 1941. Then there was the attempt with one of the chemicals you use when your house is infected with bugs, also in 41. Soon after, I just couldn't stomach it anymore.
How could something like this happen in the 'western' world? How could the home of such brilliant scientists, philosophers, and theologians ever possibly think that the mass extermination of the Jews is a good thing? How can a whole nation of humans lose any sense of morals, of ethics, of humanity? I think the answer, if there is one, is that it's a path open to any one of us. I can't stand people who try to paint Nazi Germany as 'oh IT could never happen again', or 'WE could never do something like that'. That is absolute rubbish. Such incredible depths of evil are 'just around the corner', you could say. I was looking around BBC this morning and I came upon an article about the genocides of Rwanda. Now I knew for a long time the Rwandan genocides were terrible; that on the scale of a million Rwandans were murdered. But this scared me: 800,000 Rwandans were murdered in 100 days. On average, that's EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE A DAY. As the article says, that is a higher rate than the Holocaust. No, any one of us is capable of it.

By the way, the name of this post is from a book by a Jewish theologian. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (I would love to whenever I can get some time), but I think it's a very fitting title.

Today's Headlines: Microsoft sucks and Kevin is out of shape

Some random comments to start the week (Sunday is the 1st day of the week on the Jewish--and Christian--calendar). Something makes me think I should have just named this blog 'randomness', or 'Heisenberg uncertainty principle', or just 'Kevin's random thoughts'.

Microsoft sucks. Internet explorer is being a real pain in the arse. Every time it has to open up Java it hangs and puffs and pouts and I have to end IE's meager life through the task manager. Very annoying. However, good ol' Mozilla Firefox remains ever faithful. I'm finding that more and more often I'm using Firefox...like right now! It's not a Microsoft product, its not a big name 'everyone uses me' product - two characteristics I like. And as a direct corollary of the 1st preferred characteristic, it actually works properly without freezing and crashing. Imagine that. I know, it's hard for us Windows users. Computing heaven, hahah.

Our second news article of the day has to do with my health (or lack thereof). I finally got out to the slopes yesterday. Nothing better to ease out the kinks of 6 hours work than slippin n sliding on some snow. Unfortunately, I didn't get to the mountain till sundown, after a whole day of crappy beginners had ruined all my runs and turned them into fields of moguls and ice sheets. All this led me to realize that my legs are much weaker than they used to be: both endurance, and brute strength. Since I'm too lazy to work out, I think my only hope is to play more hockey and to ski more. I should hike more in the summers to keep the legs sturdy. Anyways, Cypress needs more snow, fewer people, and my goodness, cheaper ticket prices! An adult full day at Cypress isn't that much cheaper than a Whistler day pass. And, unless you live in Zimbabwe, you'll know which one is the world class resort, and which is the little mom-and-pop hill that could.

Oh..a little postscript. The Silmarillion is awesome. Now the rest of Tolkien's works on Middle Earth make much more sense.

Till the next spurt of randomness.

"There goes the ice shelf" - comments on fragmentation

My parents rented 'The Day After Tomorrow', and I figured, why not watch it. It has a nice message about the environment and all, but the acting got pretty sappy at points. Nice graphical effects though. I'd say it was an 'okay' movie. Watch it if someone else pays for it, haha.

But anyways, watching it made me think on all sorts of random tangents. I came upon the theme 'fragmentation'. My last blog entry still fresh in mind (about Protestant/Catholic relations), I couldn't help but notice how prevalent fragmentation is in society. All we ever seem to do is fragment. This occurs between individuals, communities, nations, ethnic groups, whatever; I'm sure everyone can think of a dozen examples. But the central thing that came to my mind is that whenever you stand in the middle and try to prevent fragmentation, oh boy - you're gonna get it. If you've ever been the middle man between friends arguing, you know the feeling. See, if you root for fragmentation, you're bound to have one party on your side, so you won't be standing alone. But as soon as you try to stand in the middle and prevent the fragmentation, you're all alone: both parties look at you with suspicious eyes. There are some historical examples that come to my mind. The Apostle Paul was an anti-fragmentarian many times. Read Galatians, the Corinthian correspondences, or most poignantly, Philemon. Paul always stood in the middle, trying to keep the tiny little churches he planted from breaking up into mist. And try to keep an eye out for how people responded to him: he got it harsh. Fast forward to Desmond Tutu, standing very alone, trying to bring peace amidst the brutality of Apartheid in South Africa. He tried to prevent the fragmentation of society (in this case within blacks, and between blacks and whites), and many times he stood alone and in pain. And, more personally, I have to hear about it all the time. When you tell people you're double majoring in Biology and Religion, many times the response is: "don't they contradict each other". Now I won't lay out here why I think that statement is pure rubbish, but I don't think the two fields are at all contradictory. But there I find myself, caught in the middle, where both sides often want nothing but to fragment from the other.

Fragmenting is always easy, its being an 'anti-fragmentite' that gets you in rough waters. But how can a Christian who reads about God the reconciler remain blind of that vocation?

On a completely separate track, Canada won Gold in the Juniors. Happy? sure...but seriously, that was the worst game of hockey I've had to sit through. After months of no hockey I don't want to sit and watch the equivalent of an NHL vs. peewee hockey match. I want to see some good, tough hockey - hockey where you gotta fight HARD to win. I'm disappointed. Who cares if we won, if it was through such a lame game. I don't think many of my fellow countrymen (and women) will be with me on this one, but eh - I don't mind.

Welcome back to school those who are back.
Greetings to all.

Carthage burned

So Eric and I were finally successful in conquering a large city with full epic sized stone walls. And yes, we are total computer dorks; and no, we are not ashamed. Our second attempt at a Greek city ended in nothingness since XP loves to tab me out of whatever I'm doing just because I hit the shift key a few times...who the heck came up with that wonderful feature. Of course, when you Tab out, the game doesn't get processor priority and so everything lags out and the game falls of the edge of the earth.

Anyways. I was bored and going around websites and I came across a post on Christianity Today's website. It was Mark Noll (no small time scholar himself) interviewing Jaroslav Pelikan (haha..I won't even comment, not when he's won the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Prize, a nice $1 million). One comment caught my attention:

Could Pelikan have accomplished what he has done if he had stayed in Christian institutions? Most churches or seminaries, Pelikan reflects, remain fundamentally ambiguous about scholarship. Many are eager to use it when it reinforces their settled positions, but they become skittish when it moves into uncharted areas. "You have to give the church what it needs, not what it wants. And in order to do that you may have to leave its payroll. It hurts me to say this because I want to be part of a church where that doesn't have to be said. But show me one where it is not true."

In my few years in the Church, alongside the small view I have into some areas of Christian academics, that seems to be a very true statement. Everything is nice when you back the existent paradigm and ideology, but you start to talk new paradigms and new approaches, you may find yourself standing alone. And all of this in the Protestant church which champions its slogans of 'back to the bible', and 'bible not tradition' - all the while using paradigms painfully unfamiliar to the biblical texts, and doing more distorting than explaining.

There's one thing I'm willing to take the flak over, and that's my stance over Protestant/Catholic relations. Maybe I'm just ecumenically minded, but I can't for the life of me understand why Protestants are so quick off the gun to say Catholics aren't 'saved'/'justified'/'Christians'. Now personally, I just chuckle when I hear that, since I've read Catholic theologians and biblical scholars, and man they know what they're talking about way better than a lot of Protestants. And still I hear the fight over we Protestants believing in 'justification by faith', and Catholics believing in 'justification by works'. That is rubbish. If I understand correctly (haha!), we're saying the same thing.
The sixth session of the Catholic Church's Council of Trent, in 1547, defined justification as the regeneration and renewal of the person: "not only a remission of sins but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner person through the voluntary reception of the grace and gifts by which an unrighteous person because a righteous person". Now Luther, he was talking about justification as the declaration of righteousness, and NOT with the process of sanctification (for which Protestant theology maintains the separate word 'sanctification'). Thus, Catholic 'justification' = Protestant 'justification + sanctification'. I think you can see the problem here. One says justification by faith, and means that the initial declaration of righteousness is by faith; the other says justification by works and means that the whole life of regeneration and renewal is by works. And both are right! In fact, the Council of Trent also declared "we are said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God." I don't know any Protestant who wouldn't agree with that one.
Interesting how misunderstanding has cause so much division and turmoil in the church. I still laugh in sorrow at the irony. Pick up Galatians where Paul talks so much about justification by faith. The whole PROBLEM in Galatia was that the church was being divided: Jewish and Gentile Christians were no longer fellowshiping together. Paul comes along and says we are justified by our faith, not by works of Torah (that's another post...another incredibly misunderstood part of the 1st century world). So all those ethnic and cultural boundary markers (circumcision, food laws, Sabbath) do not mark out God's people, but faith does. Therefore, both Jew and Greek, being justified by faith, can sit and eat at the same table together as one church. Paul's move to unite a breaking church has been used to divide it. Poor guy must be rolling around in his grave as we speak.

For more info, check out:
McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction (2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 443-447.
Council of Trent. (Sixth Session) See especially chs. 4, 8, and 10.
Another (easier to read) online text of Session Six.

I'll stop before I write a draft term paper.
Have mercy on my fiery tongue.
Peace.

Living in the key of E

Finally, after a week of having no high-E string, my guitar is back to her normal self. I got a new pack of strings just as Tom Lee was closing (phew...I would have had to wait ANOTHER long weekend if I missed out), and reclothed my baby. If you have an Ibanez, you know the pain in the arse it could be replacing your strings. My Ibe has a free tremolo unit, so tuning one string will change the tension on all the other strings. Also, you have to replace each string individually (no taking all 6 off, then putting on new ones...haha bad idea: if you release the tension on the tremolo, all the springs go out of wack). I learned the hard way last time I replaced my strings to be gentle as your tightening a new string into place. Every half turn of the tuning knob I pull the string away from the fretboard and run a finger under it for the whole length to 'pre-stretch' it. That way, no busting a string as your replacing it (happened to me with that nasty high-E before). I love the sound and feel of new strings. However, I'm getting weird harmonics on my D-string. I think one of the harmonics sounding is resonating with something on my guitar, and it sounds very odd (my mind goes back to wave equations and graphs in first year physics, ugh). But, the pickups don't seem to be catching much of the sound, so it's fine with the amp turned up. (By the way, I'm not talking about the sound of a played-with-finger harmonics.)

On another note, our college group at church was surprisingly good tonight. Our new approach with this new year seems to have a lot going for it. The time and effort which went into planning the evening actually showed in how good it was. But, alas, the question is whether it can be continued. Tune in next week...

And the final note in today's triad is about DVD-RWs. I decided to pick up a few DVD-RWs on my way back from Tom Lee, as I'm becoming paranoid about the amount of time my computer has gone without being destroyed by a virus. I once lost everything I had (mostly un-backed up) back in high school when that nasty Chernobyl virus hit. So I come home hoping that XP can use DVD-RWs as easily as it can CD-RWs. Wrong. Eventually, I figured InCD will do the trick, and that took a good 45 mins to get the CD key working. But eventually everything worked, and I got my life backed up on a shiny laser-engraved disc. Yummy.

Oh yeah, happy new year. Now I actually have to look at the date on cheques marked 2005 instead of throwing them back as postdated (yes life can be lame when you work at a bank). That's the significance of 'new years' to me. A far cry from those wonderful celebrations of new years back in the ancient near east I got to read about in school, with their recitals (of Enuma Elish, great story) and drama and feasts. But then again, when you think your liturgy is actually part of the process of recreating the world again and again, year after year, so it doesn't fall into chaos, that kind of celebration is what you'd tend to get.

And to let you know, comments have been set to no registration required (since so many punks seem to be on that ugly looking Xanga stuff).

Go donate money for tsunami relief.
Peace.