OK, then do you consider yourself a modern man who lives in a universe not created by God, because I consider myself a modern person who thinks differently. Why do you think that because I live in a God created universe that I am an ID’er? Why can’t Christians believe that God works though scientific or natural processes that God created?
(I’ve been wanting to come back to this since you first posted it, and have been distracted by many things. MANY things. )
This reality comes more clearly into my view all the time. I’m sure it will continue to focus up for some time. Talking about how we each see meaning in various ways, forces me to consider the implications of what I’ve set out as “my current view.”
We know a lot about the effect of severed relationships on people, and of loneliness, particularly in older people. My family has experienced the disturbing privilege of living for an extended time at the hospital and observing very sick kids whose parents couldn’t be with them very much. We saw loneliness combined with fragility and recognized resignation, maybe despair, certainly a failure to thrive. And I’ve seen the same in nursing homes, when my grampa was still alive.
Thinking through what I think (that controversial act of Values Clarification we were condemned for doing in school in the '70s), my claim of the importance of relationships in people’s sense of fitting into the world, does require some action, doesn’t it? Recognizing and saying things like
doesn’t get the job done.
I can only be responsible for my side of the upkeep of the relationships I’m in (MMV depending), and even those can feel overwhelming. I have to “prioritize”. Some priorities are easier to figure out than others. And a few relationships, really, I can’t manage any more. Period. Those people will not be abandoned without me. Good. They don’t deserve abandonment. I just can’t be a person of significance any more in their lives.
But your quote from Berry is a reminder to me that people who are saying that litany of names have a worth that is harder to feel, when they are forgotten by the living. Cross-generational relationships are important.
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Roger,
Thanks for your reply.
I’m a postmodern, Christian woman.
I believe that God is somehow involved in or created what is. I have no idea how. And in that, I do see an aspect of meaning that comes from God. I don’t think that is the only part of what makes life meaningful. And I don’t think that one need be a Christian or even a theist to experience meaning in life.
Kendel
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If God is Love, and we can love because God loved us first by giving us life and purpose through our parents and others, and love gives meaning to life, then of course we need not believe in God to find meaning, that is love in life,
It has nothing to do with ID, only the character of life as love and relationships created by God.
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Please highlight that as I don’t recall seeing your response to what I said about how it either defines you, or you define it.
I’ve been thinking about the necessity of deciding for ourselves what we mean by meaning in life. It really does require a personal investment of deciding what it means and how best to describe it from within our experience. Protestations that terms are not well enough defined miss the point. This in my reading in TMWT last night takes pains to elaborate why that should be.
PRECISION VS ACCURACY
Earlier I made a distinction between precision, which literally means cutting something off too soon, and accuracy, the literal meaning of which is to exhibit due care towards the subject of concern. Rationality, the left hemisphere’s version of reason, demands we be precise, otherwise (so it believes) meaning will escape. Thus philosophy has taken to mimicking science. Yet meaning is not increased – more often diminished – by the process, and all that is achieved is a lack of flexibility. There is a kind and a degree of reaching after precision, clarity and rigour which is misplaced, because its subject becomes more and more tenuous as this process continues. It ends in a kind of increasingly unrewarding pedantry, reminiscent of an anorexic’s attempt to split a pea rather than swallow it. The attempt is to over-clarify an area that intrinsically does not permit it. ‘It is the mark of an educated man’, wrote Aristotle, ‘to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits’.
Human affairs are a case in point. Knowledge of something that is by its nature not precise will itself have to be imprecise, if it is to be accurate. Aristotle again: ‘For when the thing is indefinite the rule also is indefinite … the decree is adapted to the facts.’ In the same vein, Whitehead writes:
There is a conventional view of experience, never admitted when explicitly challenged, but persistently lurking in the tacit presuppositions. This view conceives conscious experience as a clear-cut knowledge of clear-cut items with clear-cut connections with each other. This is the conception of a trim, tidy, finite experience uniformly illuminated. No notion could be further from the truth.
We all recognize the value of pinning things down where possible where expedience is desirable. But do we also recognize the need not to pin things down in human affairs when doing so would so badly distort what we are talking about? @Kendel, I think you’ve done a good job of articulating what can be to be helpful while pointing to the need to each take it from there as best we can. An assemblage of someone else’s meaningful words will not always mean anything for someone else.
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Yes. This describes much of what I have in mind, and why I prefer the term “sense of.” I don’t only mean a feeling of, but a feel for. Sometimes we can’t quite put our finger on what what we have a sense of, but it’s there, just out of reach. We may not always be able to put our finger on what it is that gives us a sense of place in the world, but we can still experience that sense.
When I was thinking it over yesterday and trying to get a handle on the implications of what I mean to say, I was starting to feel like I was trying to begin writing the Federal Codes of Regulation (the legal application of federal laws). Which is not the point.
So, thanks for this reminder.
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Life experience forces us to adapt our thinking over and over. I don’t expect to have this completely settled – ever. I think mostly we can see it as a process of elimination. We might not get to a precise answer, which Mark points out is probably not desirable anyway, but we start trimming off the stuff we are fairly certain doesn’t work.
After your experiences, I imagine that allowing emotional closeness has got to feel incredibly risky. But your description of the freedom you feel sounds unsatisfying to you as well. Do you feel there is simply no relationship right now that is safe enough to risk at all?
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It certainly is that way,however i find it disturbing if someone is changing his views all the time depended on the situation he faces.As ive said ive done it myself and im disgusted by it ,but it is what it is.
For example going form Atheist to Christian then to Evolutionary Christian then to Atheism again and then to some short of Christianity mixed with various theological beliefs(im basically a sect of my own lol) makes me feel like ive betrayed my past self somehow .
Its a double edge sword.I long the love and the emotional support relationships have and all the family good stuff.BUT
If my past experiences brought me to a place sometimes even worse than my depression when i was younger then im not sure i want to risk it anymore.
Because the next one i might not be able to overcome.
Of course im not entireely mentally well you could say.Scars have been left and wounds are still open ,so therapy is needed here.
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Yes, no and maybe.
I think what is really disturbing humanly, is when after thinking one had it all figured out, one realizes one didn’t, maybe not at all. Being left ontologically empty handed, with nothing to help make sense of the world is at best disquieting. It’s where some really hard work begins, for which there is no 12 step program.
Some people are never bothered by perpetually swinging wide. You seem to be looking for a center, though. Just haven’t found it yet. I think that’s different.
Sometimes our past selves were simply wrong—youthful, inexperienced, ignorant, prideful, self-centered and just wrong. It’s no betrayal to ourselves to recognize we needed to grow up (and, praise God! we have that opportunity).
A former president here is known for talking about “Staying the Course.” That only makes sense if the initial course was the (or even a) right one.
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Yes. The switching of positions isn’t for the sake of an advantage but as a result of learning more about the situation or oneself. No one starts off knowing everything. Growing and learning is wasted on anyone committed to staying the course based on positions adopted at a less developed stage of life. Are we somehow reprehensible for abandoning our preschool values and preferences?
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You mean looking for something in the middle and not extremes?Sorry if i didnt catch that
True but that isnt always the case.
When things go bad for you you rethink some things and choises.But that doesnt mean that the beliefs you had earlier on were false because you were pridefull etc etc.For instance my view on God has changed,but my previous one (the one of atheism and even maybe dystheism) doesnt mean was “wrong” or was something that i adopted because i was pridefull and self-centered.Many people held these potisions and i wouldnt consider them that.
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Sorry. Actually intentially vague. I didn’t want to force you to accept a category I imposed.
I really mean by “center” something more like a bull’s-eye, a target, a place where you can land intellectually and feel like you’ve found a way to understand your world and experience.
Where you eventually land may not be some kind of happy medium between all the frameworks you’ve tried so far.
Absolutely. I get it. Been to a different but just as fun party.
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I hope i wont land in any extremes.Although i guess i do have some biases still
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Thanks for recognizing what’s going on over here.
I confess, I am intensely suspicious of such revivals. It’s how I’m wired; I get it from my dad.
There was a noticeable (although not dominant) revivalist current in my churches most my life, and in my extended family. I’ve been around a few – on the far outskirts. The proof is in the pudding. Has anything changed?
Reading about this one (and the Toronto Blessing and whatever else), I also recognize that my body is no trustworthy barometer of blessing. I nearly swooned, reading some of the Kunstmärchen by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Parts of Greg Bear’s Blood Music induce a similar rush.
I was at Michigan State University yesterday, because my high-school age daughter had an Orientation and Mobility lesson. While she worked with her instructor, I walked around and took pictures at the same buildings we had been in just a few weeks before. I put my hands on dead flowers, a grieving person, notes people had left, locked doors and stone banisters.
The Union is the hub of student social life; just a few weeks ago we’d been picking up bus schedules and other useful info. Berkey Hall is where I knit and read (had a class there 30 years ago myself), while they worked and where we finally met up at the end of her lesson. Of course those buildings were closed yesterday. Campus was somber. I gave a hand on the shoulder to a young woman who was clearly grieving. I watched other students fussing with flowers and candles for their dead classmates like one does at the funeral home.
Five students (kids) are still at Sparrow down the road a few miles. Still don’t know how they’re doing. One kid was hit in the spine.
I understand what you’re saying when you quote WMSC Q1. I say it at church. I believe it. By itself, however, it leaves too many questions unanswered and leaves too many people out.
Student Union Main Entrance
Along Grand River in Front of the Union
Berkey Hall Main Entrance
Locked Doors at Berkey Hall
The Note on the Pink Index Card.
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Nick, I expect you’re not done yet, and since it is of concern to you, you’re probably not going to settle on some extreme.
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May i ask if this a school you know what? Im not a US citizen so i dont follow the news sorry.
If so my condolences to everyone affected
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I don’t believe it does, “and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”
The pictures bring your tragedy home. I am truly sorry.
I don’t get too wrapped up on people going to hell. Maybe I should. I just don’t. My concern is more for those who are still living. And I should be more concerned for those around me than for those I meet on the internet. God have mercy on me. God have mercy on my family and those who I interact with regularly at work.
I shared the Keener video on the Asbury outpouring with an unlikely individual at work. So I expect I shall have less time on my hands for the discussion here.
I get what you are saying about your suspicion of these things. I like how Keener writes and talks about it. Praise God his Spirit opens our eyes and hearts to see his glory. Without that, as James Smith once said, we can’t reason our way out of this mess.
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Thank you, Nick.
Michigan State University is one of my state’s largest state universities. It is a major hub of the communities in the area.
We live about 26 km from the school; I work about 6 km from it; our church was founded on ministries to the students, and a large part of our congregation is from the University. Friends, family and neighbors are students and staff there. My daughters do NOT go to MSU. Many years ago, my husband and I did.
A week ago Monday a man who wasn’t associated with the school walked into a classroom at Berkey Hall and shot some of the students, and then shot some more students in the Union. He killed 3, and 5 are still in the hospital. Then he killed himself.
If one has a leaning to absolute nihilism, this certainly fits the picture well.
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Consider giving Keener 15 minutes, if you start at the beginning, I think you’ll fall in love with him.
His commentary on the warning against sexual immorality to one of the seven churches was outstanding for how plainly spoken and yet fearful it was.
Check out Revelation: Audio Lectures on hoopla digital.
https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/12006960