rich w
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09:36:07 am on May 21, 2008 | # |
“Arguably the funniest website I have ever seen” is how my friend billed it as he posted on my facebook wall.
So enjoy (or be mortally offended by) another triumph of the world wide web presenting a window into the tapestry of human perspectives on christian faith/morals.
Imagine it, only a decade ago views like this would be confined to his (or her?) immediate community.
hester1 1:41 pm on 22 May, 2008 | # |
!….?….!!!
rich w 10:32 pm on 8 June, 2008 | # |
Well, for me that rather delightful webpage is an extreme example of how we increasingly live out our faith in the presence of diverse opinions all billed as “christian”. As well as making me laugh, it made me wonder (without any particular conclusion) how we can hold the tension of the differences of opinion that exist.
It’s more difficult now to just say that “christians all agree on x” or that any time there is a theological disagreement, one side is “right” and the other “not real christians”.
Conversely, it’s not logically possible to hold together opposite extremes of opinion as “all valid”. If you try then you are in effect left with nothing.
Comments?
bidgood 12:35 am on 13 June, 2008 | # |
I think i have just ruptured something.
Is this a serious site or a spoof? Don’t get me wrong, i think it’s great, full of thoroughly sensible views, but i started to wonder when i read the article entitled ‘fisting and god’s will’. Surely this is a spoof? I mean the overly studied use of solitary scriptural quotes to back up the point being made, no matter how spurious the connection, sounds like every sermon i ever heard during my developemental years. It has to be a pastiche. No?
I’m not sure i agree that polarised opinions can’t both be valid. But if they are both valid, one has to specify context (ie this is my experience, that is yours, both valid, but relevant in different contexts, ie me and you) or just accept that the reason they both seem valid is because we lack the vision we would need to judge between them. This later leaves them valid, but also renders both fairly useless, leaving us on the horns of the dilemma.
In the end, you have to be proposing a pretty hard form of post modernism to suggest there is no absolute truth (as well as an integrally flawed one). The problem is not that the truth isn’t out there, but that we are not really capable of coamprehending it, of ever fully plumbing its depths. So the refusal of absolutes is not the absolute refusal of absolutes, but rather the admission of our own ability to know what they might be. It is humility in the face of the human condition.
And since biblical authority found in isolated quotes is the order of the day, how about ‘you will not delight in sacrifice, you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of god are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart’.
So post modernism is really just socrates by another name. It’s not a new idea. It’s the old chestnut to which all of western thought has been said to be a footnote.
Remember your creator, in the days of your youth… Selah.
And forward the http://www.sexinchrist.com link to your youthworker.
andrewwyld 3:30 pm on 21 November, 2008 | # |
It’s probably fair to say that almost any innuendo in the Song of Songs is really there, mind you.
andrewwyld 3:32 pm on 21 November, 2008 | # |
In fact, going further, the mystical approach to Song of Songs (“this is a metaphor for the Church as the Bride of Christ, and the breasts of the church represent the nurturing spiritual milk given in the form of twelve-step programs” etc) is a pretty big stretch, in my view.