Couch Surfing

I'm just sitting here at the beach, staring out over the massive expanse of ocean before me. I can't help but think of the massiveness of the ocean even though I can see only so many miles of it from here. It has so much power and force, yet it is itself subject to the pull of a rock millions of miles away. It crushes shorelines day and night without rest. At the same time, the waves seem to move in slow motion, and never have I seen them overwhelm the shores.

As I look farther beyond the cresting, foaming waves, the water is shimmering and calm to the naked eye. But back there I know that there are arching swells creeping toward me silently, rocking up and down a difference of 20 feet every few seconds. And the seagulls are playing. At least it looks like fun to me. They swoop down just in front of a curling wave, riding right along the razor's edge, almost surfing until, at just the right moment, they pull up and the wave collapses into a million noisy little foam fingers crawling and spreading along the surface of the flowing water, leaving behind a marbled green sea that gives more depth and dimesion to the apex of the next wave about to crest and crash again. For a moment I'm right with the bird, breathing adrenaline, almost feeling the brisk wind in my face. It's good to be here.

When it comes to really understanding politics, Noam Chomsky is unequivocally rad.

One statement that he made is turning in my head incessantly: States are violent.

Why? What is the end through which violence is the necessary means of the state?

Beyond the Bible

When the thought first occurred to me, it sounded a bit like heresy. Scripture is the inspired voice of God, alive, active, beneficial to all of us for learning and being taught about who God is and what he has done for us through Jesus Christ. You can’t go beyond that, can you?

Pick up a Bible. What you hold in your hands is a door. A door, in and of itself, is no more significant than the tree cut down to make it. What changes the significance of a door is what it leads into. The Bible is not an end. We do not study the Bible to know the Bible, we study the Bible to know the God who wrote the Bible. We can memorize the whole thing, and it will make no difference if God is not at work in us.

Christians are called not to their Bibles, but to God who reveals himself through the doorway of the Bible. So many Christians approach the doorway and are so excited at having found it that they never move beyond the threshold. They stay there, memorizing, theorizing about what God must be like, rebuking others who come to different conclusions, having never seen the magnificent work of God in their own lives. Imagine walking up to a party at someone’s house and socializing at the door. You run into people you’ve seen before as they head through, and you wonder why no one is staying by the door. Or better, everyone is standing at the door with you. No one has the desire to go inside, but everybody wants to stand right by the door, maybe catch a glimpse of the Life of the party. People start scuffling about who has rights to the threshold cause they were there first. They can’t really hear the music, and the host keeps making his way to the door saying, “You guys might as well come in, it’s cold as Hell outside and I’m closing the door in a minute.” Of course all of the freaks and geeks and cold ass transients rush the door for a chance to kick it with the cool guy or just o be warm. But no, you just stand there, waiting at the door, cause the party’s in the doorway.

Who are we?

So I'm taking a philosophy of religion class. Well, last night in class my instructor made a statement that immediately struck me as profound. She saidsomething to the effect that you never are fully yourself. You are a different you at 5 than the you at 25 or 95. And just because you are older does not mean that you are more fully you than when you were 13. That is true.

Then this morning I got to thinking that perhaps somehow, God will bring us this fullness that we are missing, that we can never attain here and now, because here and now are everchanging, and ourselves along with it. But maybe in our glorification and purification at the resurrection, God will bring us to the fullness of ourselves, with all of the good perceptions and attititudes of each instant of our lives purified of sin and perfectly attendant in our minds for eternity.

I've always had that question about how we will be when we are spiritually recescutated. Will my grandpa look and be the way he did when he was 25, 35, or when he died at 88? How does God choose? Maybe he will be the best of those. Maybe that explains it. Food for thought on the hot nonstopsoapbox.blogspot!