D.C., Charleston, Savannah in 6 days

Tomorrow morning I am leaving to embark on a journey with 9 fellow journey women and men. We are traveling to Washington, D.C.; Charleston, SC; and Savannah, GA. 

The purpose of our trip: Jewish-Christian Relations in America.

Our plans are: 

• Visit the Washington National Cathedral in D.C. 
  
• Meet with Dr. Kendall Soulen, author of The God of Israel and Christian Theology
  
• Visit The Holocaust Museum and with Dr. Victoria Barnett, Director of Church Relations for the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the Museum for a private lecture entitled, "American Churches' Response to the Holocaust"
  
• Meet with Rabbi Anthony Holz of Kahal Kadohs Beth Elohim, the fourth oldest Jewish congregation in the USA (est. 1749)
• Visit the Coming Street Cemetary in Charleston, SC, with a guided tour by Dr. Harlan Greene, Director of Archival and Reference Services at the College of Charleston
• Meet with Dr. Dale Rosengarten, Curator of the Jewish Heritage Collection in the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston
• Meet with Rabbi Arnold Mark Belzer of Mickve Israel, the third oldest Jewish congregation in America
• Meet with Dr. John Finley, pastor of First Baptist Church Savannah, a church that has a rich history of relations with the Jewish community in Savannah
• Attend Sukkot service at Beth HaTephila in Asheville, NC

I hope to post updates and happenings throughout the week.

A Date with Don Cheadle

My friend Michael wrote the other day about anticipating a date night with his wife Lauren. I somehow missed that it was Friday night so me and my wife, wolfpack whitley, invited them to go to the drive-in with us. Alas, they decided to keep their ever-important plans of dinner and a movie. We, however, pressed on; thus, having a date night of our own...without all the foreplanning and anticipation. I dare say, it was just as good though. 

The two movies we saw were The Longshots and Traitor. Both good movies. The Longshots was a great story of unexpected success and redemption. Traitor, while also being a good movie, had a bit of a different message. Without giving all of the story away, I will talk about one part that I particularly liked. 

Don Cheadle was the star and played Samir Horn. Cheadle is one of my favorite actors, but gets much less press than he deserves. Moving on, though to the scene I want to reference. One  detective is particularly turned off by Muslim extremists and his partner responds (as my  memory serves me anyway): "Where I grew up, the KKK burned crosses in black people's yards and my dad would go over and put them out. Seems that all religions have some evil

 in them." While that may not have been his exact words (I have searched for the full script, but been unable to find it. If anyone can find it please point me in the right direction) the sentiment is clear, nonetheless. Often times Christians, myself being one, label Islam as a whole a terrorist religion and conveniently forget our own past: the Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, The Ku Klux Klan, Christians bombing abortion clinics. 

Have we forgotten what some guy said a long time ago that we should remove the log from our own eye before we point out the speck in someone else's? All religions do have elements of evil in them. Is that to say that evil is inherent in religion? Not necessarily, but all religions do contain humans and humans have potential for great evil. Thus, we recognize that Islam has extremists, but so does Christianity. We can no longer point our blame fingers at others; we must also point them at ourselves.

The Silent Choice

I have just completed my paper on the use of silence in Night by Elie Wiesel (pictured below).

I have published the paper to GoogleDocs for anyone who is interested (I know it's probably no one, but you never know).

The paper can be viewed here.

Moving, Blogging Hiatus and the Middle East

As was mentioned in the previous post, we are moving soon...Saturday, actually. On top of that, right now is the end of the semester, so I am insanely busy finishing up a paper on Elie Wiesel, working on some journals for two other classes, finishing my credo (which is what I believe, right now anyway, on topics such as christology, pneumatology, eschatology, ecclesiology, etc.) and getting ready for exams.

Due to all of this going on right now I have not been blogging lately and probably will not be blogging for a few more days. 

After which, though, I will begin to ramp it up again. Hopefully this will include some insights/excerpts from my research on the use of silence in Elie Wiesel's Night and some anticipatory posts for mine and Trinity's upcoming trip to Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

Stay tuned.

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

I have said/thought some things for a while and now some others have said them in ways better than I can so I'll let you see what they have to say.

Why is there a lack of creativity in Christianity?

Christians Don't Get to Suck

Check them out and let me know what you think.



P.S. Like Andrew I have nothing special for April Fool's Day. However, Andrew's post detailing his lack of April Fool's Day festivities is much better than my puny post script here.

Question of the night

On the incarnation of Jesus and other incarnations in Hinduism David Pace, in his presentation, asked:

"Why would God not stay up in heaven and pimp it?”

I just couldn't keep it to myself; had to share it.

Conclave: Day 2

Today was a good day here in Chattanooga at Conclave. The best part of the day, though, was the evening session. Erwin McManus spoke. He is the pastor of Mosaic. He basically said that the we have forgotten what is most important: people. And these people are all doing the same thing - trying to make sense of their life. Human history is a conflict between tragedy and beauty. Its our jobs to enter into peoples' lives and show them the beauty in the midst of the tragedy.

For a while now I have seen the importance of just living life with people, building relationships with them and then, once trust has been gained, to share with them my convictions and beliefs. This is not what we usually do though. We feel that we need to change people to look just like us before they can become a part of our life or, God forbid, our church.

Tonight was a reminder to me of that and also an encouragement. Erwin said that we all have different answers, but we all have the same questions. When we break it down to some of the most basic things that all humans search for, we do. We all desire intimacy, love and acceptance. Some of may act like we don't care about these things, but we're just lying to ourselves. Well, I have been blessed with fantastic intimacy, love and acceptance with my family, my wife and my friends. Its my turn to show it to others.

Life hurts, but love is real. Am I showing it to others? Are you?


P.S. Erwin has a new book out (that I just bought tonight and got autographed by him) called Soul Cravings. Here is the description from his site: We can spend our whole lives trying to satisfy the one insatiable part of our being, our soul craving. Our capacity for spiritual experience both proves our need for something greater than ourselves and leaves us wanting when we fill it with anything but God. Soul Cravings is a powerful, down-to-earth exposition that interprets our need for intimacy, meaning, and destiny as common sense apologetics pointing to the existence of and our need for God. The book will deeply stir the reader to consider and chase after the spiritual implications of their soul’s deepest longings.

Conclave

Well, I haven't updated in a while, but right now I am in Chattanooga at Conclave: Pure and Simple. It is a youth minister's conference, so this is a very good thing. I need to get much better at my job, so this is me trying. I am going to attempt to blog updates throughout the weekend. Here is the first.

Tonight Charlie Hall led the music and Mark Matlock spoke. He gave us three questions that he's been struggling with and challenged us to ask them of ourselves as well. They are:


1. Is my life a threat for all that is unjust, selfish and evil?

2. Am I willing to "get up" and do whatever God wants me to do?

3. Right now, am I "getting up" to respond to what I clearly know God is wanting me to do?


I'm pretty sure that I know what the answers to these questions are for me right now and I'm not sure I like them. What are your answers? Why?

Hospitality

Francisco da Silva Neto

Say hello to Francisco. Francisco lives in Brazil with his father and mother.

I sponsor Francisco through Compassion. I was writing him a letter tonight and thought to let you meet him and to consider sponsoring a child yourself. It only costs $32 a month and my wife and I each sponsor a child. Compassion is a fantastic organization and currently helps more than 900,000 children in 24 countries. Please consider it. Besides, how big of a deal is $32 a month to you? I can promise you that my wife and I are strapped financially as we have been married for 6 months, are both graduate students and both work part time at out church. We don't have a ton of money, but we do realize that we can use the money we do have for good, to help those who have far less than we do.

For more information you can visit Compassion's Website or click on the banner on the right side of the page.

My Philosophy of Teaching Greek

For those of you who care, I have just finished work on a paper for my Advanced Greek Exegesis Seminar on My Philosophy of Teaching Greek. I have published the paper to Google Docs.

The paper can be found here.

The Golden Compas

There has been a ton of conversation about the upcoming movie "The Golden Compass" and about the trilogy that it is based on His Dark Materials. As I have not read the books or seen the movie I have largely been an outsider in the discussion. Thus, I have been led to what many others have said. In that, I have come across two places that handled the movie/books in ways I have not seen done yet. One is an article about it and the other is an e-mail interview with the author himself done by Peter Chattaway. Chattaway contributes often to a magazine that some of you may be familiar with, Christianity Today. They are very interesting reads. I do intend to read the books soon so I can finally be allowed to have a voice in this conversation.

The first article can be found here.

The interview can be found here.

To Veil or Not to Veil

I have recently published a paper of mine to Google Docs. The paper is titled: "To Veil or Not to Veil: Argumentation of an Egalitarian Reading of the Pauline Corpus."

If anyone is interested it can be accessed here.

The Trinity: Explained

Not my video, I just found it...enjoy...

Kingdom of Heaven

I returned home tonight to find “Kingdom of Heaven” on tv. A movie that I love, for it is brilliant in many aspects, but especially in how it upholds integrity at all costs. Some of you may know just how important integrity is to me. It is one thing that I work vehemently to never lose, for though many things can be taken from us our integrity can never be taken. It is solely our responsibility to keep our integrity. Our actions are our responsibility. I know that this idea is controversial, for our society has almost wholly forgotten what personal responsibility is. No one ever wants to take responsibility for their own actions, but to defer blame to others.







Hear me though, I am not saying that I have never attempted to defer responsibility, only that I make a concerted effort not to and to uphold my personal integrity to the highest degree that I can. This is my own personal conviction and it is on moral and religious grounds. The movie “Kingdom of Heaven” makes claims about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like by making claims about Jerusalem. Balian de Ibelin (Orlando Bloom) is given an oath early on in the movie and then gives the oath to others later on. It is an oath that we could all live by. I only hope that I am halfway able to uphold it. The oath is:


“Be without fear in the face of your enemies,
Be brave and upright that God may love thee,
Speak the truth even it leads to your death,
Safeguard the helpless,
That is your oath”


My integrity is for me in one sense, but it is for God in a greater sense. If we would all live by this oath then maybe, just maybe, we could see the fruition of the kingdom of heaven. In this movie, the kingdom of heaven is in the head and in the heart, that type of kingdom can never be destroyed or surrendered. Let us live for and hold onto the kingdom of heaven, namely one that is courageous, sure, truthful, works for the safety and righteousness of others and upholds integrity.

Kierkegaard, the Seducer

So I decided tonight, since my wife is out of town, to pick back up my “Kierkegaard Anthology” and I ran across a section that I hadn’t read in some time. It is from a section called “Diary of the Seducer,” which is found in a larger work called “Either/Or.” I am a fan of most of what Soren Kierkegaard writes, but am particularly drawn to “Diary of the Seducer” because of the sheer brilliance with which he writes and his ability to express deep, penetrating emotions. What is more is that Kierkegaard is not known as a novelist or writer in that sense, but rather as an Existentialist. He is indeed the latter, but his work in the area of the former captivated me and thus I must share. I think the passage is fairly self-explanatory.

This one woman, the only woman in all the world, she must belong to me, she must be mine. Let God keep Heaven, if I could keep her. I know what I choose; it is something so great that Heaven itself must be the loser by such a division, for what would be left to Heaven if I keep her? The faithful Mohammedans will be disappointed in their hopes when in their Paradise they embrace pale, weak shadows; for warm hearts they cannot find, all the warmth of the hear is concentrated in her breast; they will yield themselves to a comfortless despair when they find pale lips, dim eyes, a lifeless bosom, a limp pressure of the hand; for all the redness of the lips, and the fire of the eye, and all the restlessness of the bosom, and the promise of the hand, and the foreboding of the saigh, and the seal of the kiss, and the trembling of the touch, and the passion of the embrace - all, all are concentrated in her, and she lavishes on me a wealth sufficient for a whole world, both for time and eternity..."

Why is it that others can always say it better than me?

P.S. I really like pictures of famous dead people, especially if they're cool looking and it just so happens that Kierkegaard is, so that's the handsome man starring at you at the top of this post. In the future I will probably continue to add pictures of the cool people I am referencing.

Epi-Strauss-ium

The following is a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough titled "Epi-Strauss-ium," which means "On-Strauss-ism." Thus, it is a response to David Friedrich Strauss' Das Leben Jesu, which looked critically at the life of Jesus.

"Matthew and Mark and Luke and holy John
Evanished all and gone!
Yea, he that erst, his dusky curtains quitting,
Through Eastern pictured panes his level beams transmitting,
With gorgeous portraits blent,
On them his glories intercepted spent,
Southwestering now, through windows plainly glassed,
On the inside face his radiance keen hath cast,
And int he lustre lost, invisible and gone,
Are, say you, Matthew, Mark and Luke and holy John?
Lost, is it? lost, to be recovered never?
However,
The place of worship the meantime with light
Is, if less richly, more sincerely bright,
And in blue skies the Orb is manifest to sight."

NB: 'he' in line 3 is 'the sun'

Clough is saying, I believe, that though the historical-critical method (higher criticism), as evidenced by Strauss' work, might have cast a shadow on the gospels, rendering them lost, the truth can be seen more clearly without them. The picture is of the narrator standing in church facing East watching the sun rise through the windows that are the gospels. Here he can only see dimly ("On them his glories intercepted spent"). He then turns to face SouthWest and watch the sun set. These windows are clear and allow him to see the sun more clearly. Note the sun in line 3 and the Orb in line 15.

Just some things to think about. I had to read this poem for my Literature and Religion class and was struck by it, so I thought I'd share.

Comments welcome...