exciting times

These are exciting times. I cannot express enough how excited I am to only have one more week of classes, and on top of that to be leaving for Minnesota in only three weeks. It’s exciting that Dwellers of the Night: Book One will be available through Amazon.com very shortly. It’s exciting that they came from the sea is coming along nicely, and ideas for Dwellers of the Night: Book Two are fermenting in my restless mind, itching to find themselves etched onto paper. What’s not exciting is my schedule for this week, countless papers, presentations, and work nearly every day. It will surely be frustrating. I am slightly sad to be leaving Cincinnati in two weeks, but here are some photos I took to help me overcome homesickness while I’m relaxing at the lake in Minnesota:

a quip of sorts

when we abandon our dreams, 
 we abandon life itself

against the heretical nature of the christian sub-culture

If you go to a local Christian bookstore, you may be able to pick up the “Blue Pages,” a directory of Christian-owned and operated businesses. This is an excellent idea, because now we can pull ourselves deeper and deeper into our Christian bubbles, completely detached from the world. If having Christian t-shirts, Christian music, Christian fiction, Christian comic-books, Christian toys, Christian cartoons, Christian movies, Christian jewelry, Christian schools, Christian gymnasiums, Christian video games, Christian board games, and Christian t elevision shows aren’t satisfactory enough to make us feel safe in our hedonistic, anti-God, anti-morals world, now we ca n climb even deeper into the Christian culture so that we will not have to even see the faces of non-Christians on simple runs to the grocery, car shop, or video retailer. Now we will not have to worry about associating with those pagans and being contaminated by their wickedness. We can shake hands with other Christians in our exclusive Christianity and not have to make even small-talk with those liberal-minded, pleasure-seeking cretins. As good Christians, we need to follow St. Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 5.9: “I have written to you in my previous letter not to associate with the sexually immoral people.” The next thing we need to do, and I’m trying to get a committee together to do this, is move to Salt Lake City and form our own little commune with 10-foot-tall concrete walls ringed with barbed-wire to keep those ungodly atheists away from us and our families. Once we do that, we’ll be totally safe from the outside world.

Right now I just want to smack some Christians across the face.

St. Paul writes, in context (proof-texting, such as what I did above, should be a sin in itself): “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave the world.” (1 Cor 5.9-10) What Paul is saying is that Christians are not to leave this world. We are not to form our protective Christian bubbles or form communes to escape from the world. St. Paul would find such an action laughable and completely heretical and contrary to the gospel message (didn’t the Messiah spend most of his time with “the world”, completely ticking off the religious high-rollers of his day?). And yet we see Christians secluding and isolating themselves from the world all the time! Maybe they aren’t as drastic as the Amish or the Puritans (but, let us note, their case is slightly different, for they abandoned society for the sake of fleeing and escaping persecution, and this is something Jesus advised us to do in Luke 21. Sometimes I go to Family Christian Bookstores, just up the road from my house, and I find it almost sickening at all the Christian apparel they have for sell. Apparently it’s sinful to be a part of the world, so the duty of the good Christian is to take everything that has any connotations with the “anti-Christian, liberal-minded, pleasure-seeking world” and to replace it with Christian knock-offs (and this is sad, because the copies are never as great as the original, and I would much rather laugh to Dane Cook than a Christian comedian, or listen to Pink Floyd rather than a cheap Christian band). I think that if St. Paul were here, he would be outraged. He’d enter our mega-churches and our Christian bubbles and start tearing things to bit. We can speculate from the scriptures that St. Paul had quite the temper, and I can easily see him entering Family Christian Bookstores and completely ransacking the place.

I am a Christian. I seek to honor and please God with my lifestyle. I have gone to parties where there has been beer and pot. I have befriended those people whom many Christians would be appalled to even look in the eye, and these friendships are some of the best friendships I’ve ever had. I’ve gone to bars and clubs. I’ve talked theology in the aisles of a liquor outlet. I’ve smoked cigarettes at Starbucks and had great conversations on the grace and mercy given to us by God. Perhaps I am too worldly. Or maybe I just have too heretical of a grasp on grace. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I am honoring the gospel message more than those who are isolating themselves and drinking their Christian-coffee in their Creation Museum coffee mugs.

musings on my mesozoic

3685 – The Spill Canvas 

My empty promises led to our demise, and I could never tell you how I really feel, and for that I eternally apologize. I hope you never forget the tapping at your window with the harsh cold and the jealousy running through my bones. We were both selfish, but I think I was more. I would like to thank you for showing me a part of myself that I have never seen. Yeah, we were young and dumb, but it still was fun. And I guess these things just tend to fall apart, and I hope you feel the same. My empty promises brought us to an end. I just hurt you, and I never looked back. Now I have no logic to defend. You seem like such a big part of my life and my heart, but the truth is I’ve found something new, and [he] easily towers over you. 

All Hail the Heartbreaker – The Spill Canvas

I had the notion that you’d make me change my ways. My bad habits would be gone in a matter of days. I had the feeling that you’d open up my eyes to a whole new world that had since been in disguise. But that day will most likely never come for me, and it’s just my luck to end up getting stuck to everything you are. So tonight I’ll sit and pick apart your pictures and overanalyze your words. But the truth is that I’ve never fallen so hard. It’s taking everything in me just to forget your sweater so far. I had the notion that you’d make me forget the world, but your indecisive mind shows me that you are “just another girl.” I had the feeling that those looks you gave me were real. What if I ripped your heart apart at the seams? Maybe then you’d know how I feel. I can honestly say that I never, ever, ever felt this way: your lips, your eyelashes, your skin; these are the parts of your body that cause my comatose to begin. I will sleep another day; I don’t really need to anyway. What’s the point when my dreams are infected with words you used to say. I will breathe in a moment, as long as I keep my distance, [cause] I wouldn’t want to go messing anything up. So don’t go worrying about me. It’s not like I think about you constantly. So maybe I do, but that shouldn’t affect your life anymore. I knew it the moment you walked into the door. I’ll let you get the best of me, because there’s nothing else that I do well. I’ll be the giver, and you’ll be the taker. I guess that’s how this one’s gonna go: I’ll be the giver, you’ll be the taker. You’ve got me down on my knees, and I proclaim: All Hail the Heartbreaker.

Paul vs. the Judaizers

When we read St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we are reading not a theological treatise but rather a snapshot of a hot-wired drama. In the Roman province of Galatia, Judaizers—Christians promoting a works-based righteousness, and they could be either Jew or Gentile—had infiltrated the ranks of the church and advocated adherence to Mosaic Law—with emphasis upon circumcision—as needed in addition to Christ for salvation. They are the people whom Paul despises the most, and they present the biggest obstacle in Paul’s mission of advancing the gospel. In Galatia, the Christians were accepting the teachings of the Judaizers, whose teachings Paul called “another gospel”; and he pressed a rhetorical curse upon all who would teach such a foreign gospel. The model of salvation for St. Paul and the Judaizers contrasts sharply:

St. Paul understands the gospel as proclaiming that in order one to experience salvation—that is, in order to be reconciled with God and to be declared righteous—the cross is sufficient. When we come into contact with the cross through faith/trust in Christ and repentance (not a physical turning from sin but a change in our attitudes towards sin), we are then and there reconciled with God and declared 100% righteous. The Judaizers developed as devout Jews, common with the concept of obedience to the Law, came into contact with the gospel message of grace; when they became Christians, they went through a period of “cognitive dissonance” where what they had been taught all their lives regarding the Law conflicted with the gospel message of liberty from the Law and abandonment to grace. Unwilling to completely forsake their views on the Law, and equally unwilling to reject the cross of Christ, whom they correctly viewed as the Messiah, they came to a compromise on middle-ground: the cross of Christ plus obedience to certain tenants of Mosaic Law equaled reconciliation with God and the gift of being declared righteous.

Sadly, like the Judaizers, sometimes Christians will add some sort of addition to the cross for salvation, often without realizing it. When Christians state that certain theological views, certain behavioral practices, or belonging to a certain denomination are needed for salvation, they are modern-day Judaizers! Paul despises such Christians, for they twist and contort the gospel message of Christ by supplementing it with the Law. Now, Paul doesn’t care if someone wants to obey the Mosaic Law; he cares when people elevate obedience to the Law to soteriological significance, thus interpreting the cross as insufficient for salvation.

The New Perspective on Paul & Subsequent Musings

One of the most recent trends in Pauline studies has been dubbed “The New Perspective on Paul,” and it flows from a book written by E.P. Sanders in the 1970s entitled Paul & Palestinian Judaism. The New Perspective on Paul—or npp for short—clings to what Sanders proposes in his work, regarding the Law of the Old Covenant, though he himself didn’t come up with the term npp. Sanders taught that 1^st Century Palestinian Jews did not believe in works-righteousness, as Reformed scholars on Paul say. Sanders proposed that the Jews are brought into the Abrahamic Covenant at birth and stay in the covenant through works. Thus relationship with God comes first, and obedience to God comes second. A simple examination of covenant nomism runs like this:

God has chosen Israel to be His chosen people. God has given the Israelites the Law. The law implies God’s promise to maintain the election and the Israelites’ requirement to obey. God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. The Law provides for means of atonement and atonement results in maintenance or re:establishment of the covenantal relationship. All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement, and God’s mercy belong to the group that will be saved. Election and salvation are, ultimately, granted by God’s grace and not by human achievement.

The problem I have with this view is that it seems somewhat contradictory. The Jews are born into the covenant. Okay. And in the covenant, they have the choice either to obey or transgress. If they obey, they are granted atonement. If they transgress, they are punished. Thus works keep them in the covenant and lead to atonement… yet salvation and atonement come not by works, but by God’s mercy. This seems a little flimsy to me. How is this not still works-righteousness? Maybe I’m just not understanding Sanders’ position fully; however, as I understand it now, it seems like atonement and remaining in the covenant are based upon following the rules and regulations of the covenant (i.e. obedience).

All of this makes me think about the relationship of works in the New Covenant. Let’s say that baptism is entry into the New Covenant. I’m not sure if this is a genuine statement or not, though it fits historically with the role of baptism in the Middle East in the days of the early church. Where do works come in? Once we enter into the new covenant established by Jesus—whether that is through baptism or not—then what role do works play? Some would say that works keep us in the covenant. I don’t agree with this. To me, it smacks of legalism with a different cover page. We’re still operating on a works-based salvation: God’s mercy in Christ brings us into the covenant, but our own works keep us in the covenant. How is this that different from what Sanders proposed? It’s my belief that we enter the covenant when we put our faith in Christ and dedicate ourselves to Him. This is an issue of the heart, not an issue of activity or works. Our behaviors are to reflect the new status we receive upon coming into the new covenant—“in Christ”, “in the Spirit”, “the children of God”, etc.—but our behaviors do not determine our status. Thus the issue is how well we reflect our status in Christ, not how our works gain or lose our salvation. Since salvation is an issue of the heart, what we do—or don’t do—will have no bearing on our salvation. It will affect how enriched we become in God, but it won’t strip away our salvation. Does this mean that I believe salvation cannot be lost? No. I believe it can be. But losing our salvation is not something that happens based on what we do; it’s based upon our hearts. When we come to Christ, our hearts turn towards God; if we turn our hearts away from God, then we forfeit our statuses as God’s children. As Christians, we must constantly examine our lives and see if we are reflecting our status in Christ. If not, we should make changes in our lifestyle.

I am sickened by the level of works-righteousness that many Christians buy into; whenever I see it, I want to scream. It is as if the concept of God’s grace means nothing anymore. The fault, I believe, lies in poor examination of the scriptures, and I believe a lot of blame falls upon preachers and teachers who, even though they may not intend to do so, teach a works-based salvation. Whenever I hear someone say, “Real Christians don’t drink,” or “Real Christians don’t smoke,” or “Real Christians don’t masturbate,” I wonder if the people saying it realize what they’re saying. They’re saying, essentially, that our refusal to drink, smoke, and masturbate are necessities for salvation. They’re promoting a works-based salvation! I’ll easily say, “Christians should be careful with alcohol and tobacco,” and “Christians should abstain from lust,” but I will acknowledge that many Christians do drink, do smoke, and do masturbate. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m just saying that a Christian is not defined by his or her actions, but by the Holy Spirit’s presence in their life. And on the same token, a Christian is not defined by his or her reactions to the prodding or conviction of the Holy Spirit, but, simply, by the Spirit’s indwelling, which is received when our hearts turn to God.

every true story ends in death

Mom doesn’t like to read my writing. She complains to me, “Someone dies in every story you write.” She’s right. A woman once complained to Ernest Hemmingway, “Every story you write ends with someone’s death.” Hemmingway curtly replied, “Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true story-teller who would keep that from you.” As I read works of Hemmingway—I’m a big fan of A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea—is saturated with nihilistic elements, and I am finding that my writing, too, has lots of nihilistic undertones. As a Christian, this has concerned me. In Worldviews class today, a girl asked the professor, “Can someone be a naturalist or a nihilist or an extistentialist and be a Christian at the same time?” The professor replied, “Definitely. I would bet that ¾ of this campus is existentialist.” He went on to say that these philosophies saturate our culture in a variety of forms, and that there are Christians who hold to many of the beliefs of these “anti-Christian” worldviews. So I’ve decided that I am a “Christian Nihilist”, although when nihilism speaks of “God being dead” and “life holding no meaning” I disagree; however, I agree with many of nihilism’s tenants. I expect a xanga post on this to be coming sometime in the future.

lobster delight

I spent the morning packing up my room. Tomorrow I’m taking dad’s van down to school, loading up boxes, and then ferrying it back home. I packed thirteen boxes full of books and movies and video games and all kinds of junk like that. Throw on top of it four trash bags of clothes and one trash bag of, well, trash. I never realized how much stuff I had in my room. The house is quiet. All I can hear are my fingers tapping on the keyboard and the hum of the refrigerator. Amanda is on her way home from Indiana. She tells me she’s been getting really good at Halo on the X-Box, so we’re going to duke it out tomorrow, see who wins the title. I’m kind of nervous to be honest. It would be so humiliating for her to beat me! With Book One of The Procyon Strain complete, I’m turning my attention to a short novella entitled they came from the sea. I told Karen all about the plot synopsis. She thinks it is ridiculous and no one will read it. Honestly, she’s probably right. But it’s going to be so much fun to write! Think about the movies “Cloverfield” and “War of the Worlds” combined, except the monsters aren’t space-borne aliens; rather, they are oversized crustaceans! Giant lobsters, humongous horseshoe crabs, crawling onto dry land to resettle, pushing humanity out of the way with their pincer claws and hairy fangs! Stupid? Yes, quite stupid—and silly. But it’s going to be really fun to write. Here is a funny picture I found online (the lobsters in my story aren’t this friendly):