Christianity @ MindSay

            This is a recent communication from a friend of ours, a young lady who is living in Papua New Guinea.  For the last few months, she’s been teaching the nationals about HIV AIDS.      

            It’s 6 o’clock in the morning, and I am awake.  I had not planned to be.   In fact, it will be another half hour before my alarm goes off, telling me it’s time to prepare for my morning run, and I’ve had less than 6 hours of sleep.  Not for lack of trying mind you.  I was in bed by 11pm last night, knowing that today would be a full day, a day for errands in Mt.  Hagen, and I would need my sleep.  But I couldn’t sleep.  I didn’t know why.  Indigestion?  Excitement or anxiety over the events of tomorrow?  Another night fraught with sinus congestion due to allergies?  There were any number of plausible explanations, and I knew willing myself to sleep would not make sleep come any faster.  So I prayed that God would allow sleep to come at His will, and I waited, for over an hour I waited. Finally sleep did come, and along with it a dream, one that I feel compelled to share.

            In this dream, I was with my parents, not surprising since one of my last activities of the day had been to write emails to them.  My mother and I were walking together through a house drama, similar in style to “House of Judgment,” for those who are familiar with that genre of drama.  Each scene of the drama takes place in a different room and the audience travels from room to room, following the actors.  I do not now remember all the details of the drama, but I remember being quite impressed.  It had followed the life of a young woman and her journey.   And then came the punch line.  My mother and I were led into a final room, where we were joined by my father, whom I don’t remember traveling with us through the drama, but perhaps he was in another room.  We all sat down, I in a chair and my parents on a sofa with a wood frame.   A man came out with a little slide card, one such that you might slide through the jacket in order to match up the name of a guitar chord with the string alignment or a teacher might use to match up the number of questions with a grade allotment.  He was struggling to figure out how to use it.  It seemed that each answer we were meant to give coordinated with a next response, and on the wall was a chart where our responses would be marked and assessed.  I soon realized what was happening.  This man was trying to use this sliding card and chart to speak to us about Jesus, to give us the formula for being “saved.” In my dream, I became visibly distressed, and I could tell by the glances from my parents and the way they shifted in their seats that they too were agitated by this experience.  In unbelief, I asked the man, “Are you assessing my Christianity with a little card? Are you really trying to give me a formula for salvation?” Finally, in desperation and anger, I proclaimed, “Well, am I “Christian” enough? What do you think? Have I said all the right things? Have I done all the right things?” The man looked clearly surprised and perplexed by my questions.  Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, and looking downward, shaking his head slightly, he admitted, “I don’t know.” The tension in my countenance lessened as I looked at this man, and I asked sympathetically, with tears bristling in my eyes, “May I offer a suggestion?”  He glanced up eagerly, giving me permission to continue.  “I loved the drama,” I said, “But it was only a drama.  What I would have preferred to hear in the end was not a formula or what I must do next, but a story, a real story.  I want to know about you.  What did it mean to you? What does it mean to you?” The man looked suddenly relieved, like a deep burden had been lifted.  He said simply, “Thank you,” and then added as an afterthought, “Would you be willing to tell this to my superiors?” Enthusiastically, I proclaimed, “I would be willing to tell this to whoever you want me to!!” We walked out of the room, and I caught the eyes of my parents as I left, which glittered in agreement and support.  I then went to the front desk of what seemed to me to be a hotel, and spent much time imploring the man behind the desk to change the ending of the drama.  And just for the sake of full disclosure and as proof that this was in fact a dream with all the random absurdities of a dream, I remember my father standing in the corner of the room, completely at peace that I was taking care of the situation, enjoying a piece of chocolate cake, a delicacy I don’t eat frequently in Papua New Guinea and sometimes crave.  Yes, I implored the man behind the counter with all the passion and emotion that was within me.  But he just stood there, smiling a patronizing smile, as if listening to the whims of a small child.

            And thus I awoke, tears still pooling in my eyes.  I was in my bed, in my little house in Papua New Guinea, fully awake, though the hours of sleep had been few, and urged by an impulse to write.  It is now 6:30 am, and as I sit here in my bed, typing on my laptop, the sun is rising over the mountains.  The morning chill has started to numb my fingers, but I could not begin my day without writing this.

            I leave you with this appeal.  Christianity is not a formula.  It is not something we do.   It is not a set of rituals, or saying the right prayer, or speaking the magic words, or believing something rightly enough that it might possibly earn you a ticket to heaven.  How dare we reduce it to such! How dare we judge others based on our criteria of what is right! No, Christianity is about a relationship, an experience of God reaching to your heart, through no power, strength, or action of your own.  If you are going to speak of anything, if you are going to share anything, speak of what Christ has done in your life.  Speak of that moment or that lifetime of moments when you realized that you weren’t enough, that you needed the hand of a loving God in your life, and it was there.  It doesn’t have to be a single moment or a visibly life-changing “I was a drug addict, and now I’m clean” kind of moment.  It just has to be your moment, your experience.   Speak of that.  And leave the judgment, formulas, and attempt to do all the right things to others.  There’s enough of that in the world… sadly.

When you close your eyes what do you see? Is it really a world working in tandem and side by side with no frowning or discontent? When we dream at night are we transfixed in a utopian space of complete ecstasy and harmony with ourselves and others? As we think about these concepts of equality, unity, harmony, etc.. we must be realistic that in all efforts the most vain one would be to think that there would be a day of arrival. For the Christians the return of Jesus is a joyous one in which the saved will be hoisted away to the kingdom of heaven while the destitute and “others’ will be left behind. Even at this point when Jesus returns utopia is still an abstract uncertainty not given visibility to all, but only privy to some. Earth and the real world to which we all wake up to has never been written or conceived of as a place in which “heaven” or Utopia” can ever exist (See Freire, P., Souza de Frietas, A.L., Park, P., & Macedo, D. (2007). Daring to Dream: Toward a pedagogy of the unfinished). I find this to be perplexing when trying so hard for a better world with a more equal and equitable sustenance for all. I lose “hope” at times that perhaps dreams of moving toward something better and harmonious is as fictitious as heaven itself or the rapture. What if we are only living in ourselves in an abstract world much like the matrix? What if we came and realized this as our being and sustenance as a human individual? Then could it be possible if it is our world that we can make such impacting movements of moving toward what we believe will be a plateau of harmonious enlightenment? My intention in discussing such a matter is that I believe we become comfortable in a world in which we can float along blissfully, but never rise to enlightenment or critical consciousness. In reality it is impossible to sustain a single goal among all men, and if it does so happen it will be but a breath’s moment. How is it that we remain so disparate? Some have framed such difference in terms of “barbarism” and “civility” (Like Immanuel Kant), but such descriptions should be critically understood by those who are uttering them (i.e. middle-class, white, elite, educated men of patriarchal societies governed under monarchies and the guise of Christianity). How do we begin a unity among so much disparity?

 

I believe that it has not happened yet that we have been given the experience of needing solidarity. The evil within us is not terrorism as much as it is the egoistic influence of insatiable desire for more and more. Everything acts on itself and on others. We can continue to indulge in power as a gluttony of the ego or we can relinquish such pursuits in understanding that this is the real issue. Christian as well as all religious and non religious, people are vulnerable to the ego. It relies on vanity and reward that is often manifested in material terms. People, or converts, become material gains and thus serve to relish the ego more in determining a sense of rightness and this is the way. How so can I argue about such a thought and path when I myself am advocating for a collective thought or shared “humanhood”. Am I being so entertained by the ego even as I write about it? I do not put myself at a distance with this topic. I understand that brief exhilaration of someone fawning over your work or ideas, but I have come to understand this a s brief pleasure that serves to misguide benevolent intentions and practices.

 

It is really at this philosophical and spiritual point that I draw a line in the sand about the role, nature, and function of man in conjunction with humanity. For some who have been called “existentialists” there is a very humanistic and specific concentration on the individual as removed form any obligation to the other or collective need outside of the individual. My work with the pedagogy of humanity should not be confused with humanistic philosophies that negate a religious membership or even at times spiritual consciousness. Some of the ideas of humanism have been adopted in the pedagogy of humanity, but I make clear with the utmost certainty that spirituality is not lost in human objectification that is humanism.

 

I believe that man may exist on his own, but will not survive on his own; for if this were the case, man would always have been man and never man and woman constituting humanity. Those with a more spiritual and enlightened sense of the world around us also feel a more communal sense with all that is around us. Should we not feel that we are a part of everything? Perhaps energy transfixed and illuminated in different lights producing differing objects, but all within a cosmic ball of us and the universe. We, and religion especially, try to remove the relationship between the natural world and the abstract idea of the human world. Some Christians (See Jesus Camp Movie) disregard the natural world under the scripture that issues credence to take what you will from the earth because that is why it is here. Additionally, the apocalyptic rapture mentality has caused fundamentalist to become blind to the natural world because they believe the rapture will be coming soon so there is no need to plan for a future that does not concern them. The hell that will be left behind and the torment scorched earth that has been drained of life and sustainability will not be the doing of sinners or nonbelievers, but those who believe without a consciousness. When people start to disappear it will be out sickness create from biological weapons used to fight terrorism, it will be from genocidal endeavors from those seeking to purify their lands of the wretched (see the crusades, Rwanda, Cuban revolution, US patriot act, and so on), it will be that many know the future and choose to take themselves before the future takes them in climate shifts of roaring oceans, earth quakes, torrential flooding, or nuclear holocaust.

 

We sit comfortably eating a dinner in front of the TV and watch as the world creeps up on us and yet we still ignore that it affects us. When the world has swallowed itself perhaps we can start again with a blank slate. Perhaps the next time we will be more cognizant of such failures and egoism. I, however, that we will continue as we do with no recognition of learning what has happened, but always creating some justification in an ideology, belief or religion, or orgasmic succumbing to the egoistic vanity that rest in each individual.

 

Take and do what you will as an individual with no regard to the consequential affection to the rest of the collective. When alas we repeal our lives and take our last breath we will become enlightened too late to understand what it was all for or what it all meant.

This movie wasn't really what I was expecting.  I thought there would be the candy coated fantastical realm of yore, the one that we saw in the excellent first installment of the Narnia Chronicles.  Instead I saw a darker and deeply thoughtful film.  It has the wonderful action set pieces through out, but the movie also deals with the results of your actions, taking responsiblity for what you have done, and living life beyond unwise choices.

Sometimes we have to know that our bad choices are not the end of our lives.  We often have to go on and reclaim or restore that which is good and just in ourselves, while not falling to those traits that lead us astray in the first place.

Think that theme isn't in this movie? See it for yourself.

Here is a brief synopsis:

From the birthing scene at the start of the filme, I could tell that Prince Caspian would be a darker take on the land of Narnia then the first installment.  This didn't bother me, since the book it is based on is much more melancholy then the first book.  We find the prince escaping for his life as his professor leads him to freedom; the child that was just born was a son to the general of the Telmarian Army that has conquered the land of Narnia.  His plan? Get rid of the legitimate kind and put himself on the throne.  Now that he has an heir, there is nothing left to loose...

It turns out that the prince uses the horn of Queen Susan, summoning the help he so desperately needs.

And that help? Why the four ancient Rulers of Narnia that were whisked back to our reality at the end of the first movie.  When we meet the four young people, we find their previous adventure has changed them.  Peter has grown to be a bit more moody and sullen, feeling that his life in Narnia has been cut short.  He is prone to fights and sends fists flying with the slightest provocation.  Edmund is much more of a man; he has explored his darker side and came out stronger then he thought he could be.  Susan is more introspective, her thoughts seem to be a bit deeper then she has been before.  Lucy has the faith of the group always knowing that they would go back.

And back to Narnia they go.

What follows is two hours of magic laced with a sense of adventure, action, longing, loss, and completion.  The four children find a Narnia much changed from what they had known before, the magical nature of the realm seeming to no longer be in existence.  The prince finds that his help isn't quite what he was expecting, leading him to find the source of belief in himself that he needs to lead the assemble people (and dwarves, animals, centaurs..etc) of Narnia.   Aslan the Lion, the analog to Christ, is present throughout the movie, even if his isn't physically seen a whole heck of a lot.  The group just arn't looking for him, except for the ever faithful Lucy.

As I said before this is a much more melancholy movie then I expected; but not in a bad way.  The movie often seems like it is paralleling the pains of just growing older; how sometimes you have to leave certain ideas and perceptions behind.  Yet you should never leave the part of you that sees the magic in the world; the creation that God has given us and the beauty that humanity has to offer.  There is no denying the Christian themes in this movie, from self sacrifice to the non condemning  nature of our Creator.

Even when we screw up, God does not love us any less.

I know people will come away from this movie just seeing something akin to "Lord of the Rings" Lite.  Honestly, if someone asked me to choose either to go to Middle Earth or Narnia, I would have to choose Narnia.  While Middle Earth always seems to be a struggle of Good over the Encroaching vileness that lives in our souls, Narnia has always seemed to be a struggle of Evil against the inherent good that we can accomplish.

Besides, I love fantasy creatures.

I could go on about how cool the effects were, which is true.  Or how neat it is to see some awesome rendering of the previously mentioned fantastical Creatures, which is also true.  Or even the excellent score that the movie has, capped with an emtionally charged ending tune by a surprise singer, Regina Spektor.  But those are just elements elements that help push the themes of the movie forward. 

I did have a few problems, but honestly why point them out? The movie surpasses those odd issues.

I'm still mulling this movie over since it has made me think about my own life on so many levels. I'll just leave you with this thought:  Sometimes God is there with you all along, you just have to pay attention when you want to see his presence.

 

Have you noticed that the Mainstream Media (MSM), Democrats and Republicans are predicting Jeremiah Wright’s racism against Whites, friendship with anti-Semitic Farrakhan and the promotion of the Black Liberation Theology will have little effect on Barack Hussein Obama’s Campaign if he should win the Democratic Nomination for President?

 

It must be a Politically Correct think for those three groups to agree on the effect of Wright.

 

I am here to tell you that Black Liberation Theology (BLT) alone not just Wright’s deviant Black Supremacist/Victimhood stance should affect how Americans vote if Obama should win the Democratic nomination.

 

Proponents of BLT have said the theology stems from the concern Jesus Christ had for the poor and downtrodden. Critics have viewed BLT as Black Supremacism disguised with the word “Christianity”. BLT is more akin to Marxism and the Black Power movements (such as the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam). BLT criticizes the White Man for all the ills the Black Man’s past history and present circumstances, utilizing facts to distort the impact on Blacks is a huge exaggeration of BLT.

 

Rev. Rob Schenck was on Hannity’s America show discussing Jeremiah Wright’s embracing of BLT. Schenck made it clear that BLT is very close to the Liberation Theology of Latin America which was overtly pro-Marxist (supporting Latin American Communists), Anti-Catholic and Anti-American.

 

JRH (Hat tip ChristianNewsWire.com)