It’s a mad world.
Those were my thoughts Friday morning, after reading about a boy, three years old, who last year was tortured and beaten to death over a 3 day period, by his mother’s boyfriend as his mother watched and laughed… Throughout the day, I was filled with melancholy, reflecting on life’s seeming absurdity, and the pointlessness of such horrendous violence. Then, Paris happened. I began to cry. Continue reading Why does evil exist?
“To think the way you think, you must be either dumb or dishonest — not to say evil.”
I grew up in a conservative evangelical circle. Evangelicals, by definition, are out there to spread the evangelion, the gospel, the good news about Jesus. That means that normally, we want to be the ones talking, not listening: we’re messengers, preachers. That also means that a lot of people hate us because we never listen to them. Those people are right.
It’s a sort of natural patronizing attitude we have: we’re walking around saying we have a personal relationship with the guy who claimed to be Truth incarnate, so, clearly, everyone should listen to us, right? We don’t even realize that there are a bunch of other Christians who claim to have that relationship with the same Truth-man and yet we all disagree on a bunch of things. Something is wrong. Continue reading Two Ears And Only One Mouth
I am really into history, and into knowing ancient cultures. When I visit a new country or city, I want to see the history and values of that place. The best place to get a feel for that is the city’s biggest temple. Majestic displays of architecture and the best each culture had to offer in matters of art, few things express as much about a people as their places of worship.
I imagine the music, art, dances, massive numbers of people and animals in ritual, smells, colors and sound, the spiritual and cultural ethos that wrapped the whole atmosphere there. The architecture, the way the sunlight goes in, the position of the temple in the city, all have a purpose. Often the temple would have the most treasure in the city, and would surpass even a monarch’s palace in wonder. The question, maybe, is: what for? What did the glory of the temples stand for? The answer: for the gods. Temples are orderly, solemn, majestic, wondrous, because they are done to please the gods, not mere men. Continue reading Mad Priests, Temples, and Sexuality.
TheoCité 