This is a great photo taken of a young girl in Sanorgaon, Bangladesh

green eyes
Originally uploaded by phitar.

Causal Christianity

I've been pondering the relationship between cause and effect planning with the "call" of God. What is the relationship between human logic and the transcendent interjection of God? I'll admit at the outset that this is not something I dwell often on. I did a paper on it once at Bible college. But like Dr. Who's TARDIS, the deeper I explored, the more my head hurt. I think its important to look at because I'm sure we have met all kinds of people who strongly identify and publicly espouse one of the following views - and as such, it has coloured how they see themselves and God, their responsibilities, and the way they look at the world.

Here are some of the ideas I have heard:

God calls despite our plans: I heard someone define the difference between the call of God and their own planning in terms of God often speaking to them about what they do not naturally want to do. ie. we supernaturally sense a direction only when it is foreign to our logic.

God calls and they become our plans: that God speak to them through their passions, ie. He wants them to do what they love doing. Without over simplifying it, this would be the direction to which John Eldredge would lean.

God is in the planning: That God works through who we are - so as long as we live 'in tune' and sensitive to the spiritual, our plans are automatically God's call to us.

God appears to correct our plans: God allows us freedom to plan as we will, but will interject in history, disrupt our plans, when we stray off track.

God's call is cause and effect: That God has diffused his call into logic. ie. Cause/Effect is his call, determinism. This effectively declares that God has no call in the traditional sense.

Is it a question of all of the above?
Does God tailor the approach according to the individual? (Spoken like a true westerner!)
Is there even a definable way in which the transcendent relates with the immanent?

Oh Crap!

It's been unusually warm here today, so I opened our garage door to let some air get in there after our winter.
I went out to pump the bike tyres up and vamoosh! They've been flogged, nicked, gestolen, pilfered, borrowed long term, scammed, pocketed, taken, - whatever you want to call it, they are gone.

If you happen to see two people riding a large blue, and a smaller red mountain bike around St. Louis Park - shake em down!

People really suck sometimes.

. . . and the winner of the gross generaliser award goes to . . .

take a bow A. Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theo. Seminary
(que canned applause)

I came across the following link when searching for reviews of Brian McLaren's book 'Generous orthodoxy'. It's important to me to try and get some feel for what Christians are thinking out there even though it makes me angry at times.
If any of you have read the book (I reccomend it), click on the following link to get a text book example of how fear can cause us to think in 'shotgun like' terms instead of 'rifle like' logic.

Link

Stolen Link - Afghani Girl

There is a fascinting story about the Afghani girl that was photographed by a National Geographic photographer in 1985.
This was gleefully stolen (a.k.a AUS/UK - nicked) from one of Dougs old posts.
The original photo helped bring to light the horror that some knew as life in Afghanistan.
As someone who works with refugees - I remember this as a watershed article, and the photo has been used since to highlight the refugee plee.

Link

Stolen Wisdom

I thought I'd post this before thooperman could, cause then there's a chance someone will think the thought originated with me!
It's kind of in the stream of what Brian McLaren says in the preface of Generous Orthodoxy, and yet paradoxically different - he says that it is not so much that he is a brilliant thinker, it is more that he is quicker to put into writing what others have been thinking for a while. I like that style of humility.
Anyway, the original stolen wisdom goes along this line taking about pessimism vs optimism:

Many people find it easy to identify what is wrong with any given object, organization or person. Rare ability is found when one is able to stop what is right, noble, good.

I would add that it is very hard, even life sucking, to around pessimistic people for a large part of any given lifetime.

Getting older

This morning I went to write the number of the replacement battery that I need for my watch on my hand.
It has been running slow for a while, and alas, finally, it has stopped.

Wise writers often mention how aging sneaks up on you. It's not like you wake up one morning and realise that you are old. It is more that there are pressure points along the way, key events that ease you into the sense that you are closer to death than you are to birth. For some it is playing sport, for others it's being addressed formally by younger people, hair beginning to fall out a couple of strands at a time.
For me it was writing a replacement battery number on my hand. I remember when doing so was not such a problem. It was like writing on wet paper, a little flexible but taut and strong. Today's experience though was more akin to writing on a loose linen sheet, or even crepe paper. As soon as I applied the pen, my skin folded and stretched in opposition to the pen. I guess its a composition of sun damage and loose aging skin.
A sad day indeed.