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To Kindle or not to Kindle

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A review of the digital reader from Amazon.

Well, I am a reader.  You could say an avid reader.  It is, no doubt about it, one of my favorite activities in the world.  A good book, a reference book, a history book, and a cup of coffee and I am in my own world.  Diving into the knowledge, the stories, the history within two covers, printed on paper – a piece of life, captured in words – is a magical experience.  I love books.  But is it the book itself that I love, or the content for which the book is a vehicle?  In ancient times, before the printing press, knowledge and stories were shared orally, then initially printed in the form of cave drawings, early alphabetic attempts, etchings on stone, writing on skins and scrolls…

For the last several hundred years we’ve had books.  A big step forward.  Well now we have not just books, but devices that can contain thousands of ‘e-books’, and the ability to read them in a fashion somewhat similar to an actual book, thanks to e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle.  Will it catch on?

It seems at some level is already has.  Thousands of Kindles, Nooks, Sony and other e-readers have been selling.

Yet I resisted this digital phenomenon, citing my love for the book itself and the experience that came with it – it’s own history, former owners, dusty look, leather-bound cover, or crinkled paperback existence.  How could you replace the beauty of a worn-out spine or the smell of a printed page?

But after my recent move, and carry box after box after box of heavy books, and knowing that I would continue to add to this collection – I decided I had to at least give the e-book thing a try.

So about two months ago I broke down and bought a Kindle.  I was worried for the most part about the reading experience.  I knew it would be great to have access to so many books at once, and be able to carry them with me, and be able to highlight, take notes, find definitions of words in a second – but would I actually like to sit down with a digital device and read?  Could this experience really emulate reading an actual book?

KindleThe answer is decidedly yes.  The Kindle arrived, and I had bought the corresponding cover for it – which makes the whole thing look much like a book, and you have to open it like the cover of a book, so there are some nods to the traditional printed counterparts.  After charging it up, and loading a few free books, and buying a couple others, I started to use it.  And I found that not only is it acceptable – I love it!  It is actually easier to read than an actual book, because there are no pages turn.  This means I can read with one hand, or with no hands, I can read while eating and use the side of my hand to ‘turn a page’.  The digital ink technology mimics printed ink, and is no worse for the eyes than reading an actual book.   It turns out that I am more interested in the content of a book than I am in the book itself.  But don’t worry – I am not turning turning my back on my printed pieces.  In fact, I just had some built-in bookshelves put in at my house to house the collection my wife and I have, but the fact is that I can only take so many books with me at a time, and the Kindle ups that amount incredibly.

And of course the fact that there are millions of free e-books in the public domain, including tons of theological and historical texts – not to mention thousands of literary classics – and you really can’t go wrong.  At $139, my Kindle paid for itself an hour after I had it out of the box, downloading plenty of free material, as well as newer books at discounted prices.  I find myself reading more and more these days – and when I’m reading a real book, I actually get nostalgic for my Kindle.

So if you’re also a serious reader, you may want to give an e-reader a second look.  And for my part, the latest incarnation of the Kindle, the Kindle 3 – graphite with 6″ pearl e-ink display, a battery that lasts a month, the ability to hold 3,500 books – is the best of the bunch.

And now, of course, you can subscribe to Pub Theologian on your Kindle and read it anywhere, anytime!

See a review in the London Telegraph of the Kindle.


The Impossible Future

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Excerpted from John D. Caputo’s On Religion:

We say that we want the future to be “bright,” “promising,” “open.”  The force of the future is to prevent the present from closing in on us, from closing us up.  The future pries open the present by promising us the possibility of something new, the chance of something different, something that will transform the present into something else.

Let us make a distinction here.  There is a relatively foreseeable future, the future for which we are planning, the future on which we are all hard at work, the future we are trying to provide for when we save for our retirement or when a corporate team sets up a long-term plan.  Let us call that the “future present,” by which I mean the future of the present, the future to which the present is tending, the momentum of the present into a future that we can more or less see coming.  I have no intention of lightly dismissing this future.  Institutional long-term plans, retirement plans, life insurance policies, plans for the future education of our children, all such things are very serious, and it is foolish and irresponsible to proceed without them.

But there is another future, another thought of the future, a relation to the future which is the future that is unforeseeable, that will take us by surprise, that will come like a thief in the night and shatter the comfortable horizons of expectation that surround the present.  Let us call this the “absolute future.”  When it comes to the relative future, the future present, we have “reasonable expectations,” “cautious optimism,” “bulls and bears,” but as regards the absolute future we must be like the lilies of the field who sow not, nor do they reap, but who are willing to go with what God provides, which also means that they are ready for anything.  For the relative future we need a good mind, a decent computer, and horse sense, those three; for the absolute future, we need hope, faith, and love, these three.

With the “absolute” future we are pushed to the limits of the possible, fully extended, at our wits’ end, having run up against something that is beyond us, beyond our powers and potentialities, beyond our powers of disposition, pushed to the point where only the great passions of faith and love and hope will see us through.  With the “absolute future,” I maintain, we set foot for the first time on the shore of the “religious”…

With a notion like the absolute future, we move, or we are moved, past the circle of the present and of the foreseeable future, past the manageable prospects of the present, beyond the sphere in which we have some mastery, beyond the domain of sensible possibilities that we can get our hands on, into a darker and more uncertain and unforeseeable region, into the domain of “God knows what” (literally!).  Here we can at best feel our way, like a blind man with a stick, unsure and unsteady, trying to be prepared for something that will take us by surprise, which means trying to prepare for something for which we cannot be prepared.  We cross over the border of rational planning methods, venturing into the sort of thing that makes corporate managers nervous, venturing out onto terra incognito.

The absolute future is not much help in planning an investment strategy, where the idea is to guess the trends; nonetheless, as every fund manager eventually finds out, it belongs irreducibly to the structure of life in time.  This is the sphere of the impossible, of something of whose possibility we just cannot conceive.  But of course, the impossible happens, which is the import of the story of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary.  So it is not simply or absolutely impossible, like “p and not-p,” which would reduce it to incoherence, but what the French philosopher Jacques Derrida calls “the impossible,” meaning something whose possibility we did not and could not foresee, something that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, that has never entered into the mind of human beings (1 Cor 2:9).

So I am plainly advising us to revisit the idea of the impossible and to see our way clear to thinking the possibility of the impossible, of the impossible, of the possible as the “im-possible,” and to think of God as the “becoming possible of the impossible.”

The Threat of Relevance

The Text, Theology Comments are closed

Came across these great insights from the late NT scholar Krister Stendahl.  They are too good not to pass along, and articulate exactly why I love to dig into the background and context of the text:

“Many of us read the Bible all on one level.  One reason for this may be that we are somewhat afraid that unless we do this, the word of God is not going to be relevant enough for us.  We do not have enough faith in the word of God really to allow it to speak for itself – so we hang on our own little relevancies, just as apples or other decorations are hung on a Christmas tree.

Actually, there is no greater threat to serious biblical studies than a forced demand for ‘relevance.’  We must have patience and faith enough to listen to and seek out the original’s meaning.  If this is not done, biblical study suffers and may, indeed, come up with false and faulty conclusions and interpretations.

This is a serious point for our topic (the Apostle Paul), because we have gone behind the hermeneutical to the exegetical level – behind today, behind Luther and Calvin, behind Augustine.  We have tried to see an original meaning – albeit an original meaning which proved by interpretation and reinterpretation to be significant at different points in history.  But when is it legitimate to read Paul’s words about justification or about, say, conscience in a truly Pauline mood, a mood which seeks to discover what was in the mind of the author rather than meanings for us today?  As an exegete, as a biblical scholar, I must be primarily concerned with the former question.

But as a theologian and pastor let me point out that we are not supposed continually to play “Bibleland” and dream ourselves back into a sort of Semitic mood.  That is not what God wants us to do.  But, we must first read the Bible to find original meanings and allow those meanings to correct our tendencies to read our own views into the original rather than letting the original stand and speak for itself.  Seek ye first the original meanings – and all these things shall be yours as well….

It is very important, for example, that when Paul speaks about the Jews, he really speaks about Jews, and not simply the fantasy Jews who stand as a symbol or as the prime example of a timeless legalism…

What has happened to Christianity is that instead of having free access to the original, we have lived in a sort of chain reaction – Augustine touching up Paul, and with Pelagius discussing and turning these things around, the medievalists pushing one way or another, and then further reactions, moving away from the original.  We must now take a fresh look at the original and try to make our own translation, learning from the older versions and from the Confessions, to be sure, but translating the text and not the translations.

The original is there, and I have tried to point to it.

The original is there, and to return to it is to be a true son or daughter of the Reformation.”

-=-=-=-
–From Krister Stendahl’s Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Fortress Press, 1977, Kindle Edition).

Great book, by the way, if you want some insight as to how we in the West often misunderstand Paul by reading him through the lens of the Reformation and a Lutheran/Calvinist introspection-obsessed perspective rather than through his first-century Jewish-Hellenistic context.

If you’re interested in these things – finding out more of what the Bible meant then so we can begin to grasp what it means now, and live in the TC area, feel free to join us Tuesday evenings for our Text-in-Depth gatherings.

The Divine Present

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Commentary on Torah Portion Sh’mot (Exodus 1:1-6:1) written by Rabbi Marc Wolf, Jewish Theological Seminary.

The past ten years have brought us blogging, Googling, YouTubing, tweeting on Twitter, and updating our Facebook statuses. Each progressive step (if we really want to call it progress) has brought new meaning to here and now. What these technologies have demonstrated is that we have a virtual obsession with being current—with letting people know exactly what we are thinking, doing, or experiencing.

At first, the obsession was casual. We blogged about our lives and posted videos on YouTube, highlighting the trivial and the sublime. We reacted to news stories, ranted about airline service, waxed philosophical about politics, and inspired an audience of millions-and in some cases there actually were millions in the audience. Who didn’t enjoy watching the hit counter exponentially escalating on the video of “Jill and Kevin’s Wedding Entrance” (currently at over 38 million views and definitely not an example of the sublime) or feel provoked to act by “The Girl Effect” as it landed in inboxes and on blog posts? We have been amused, moved, enraged, and entertained as we demonstrated with our comments in online forums.

But our fixation didn’t end there.

As we moved through the decade, we discovered that blogging was too demanding for people with day jobs, so Facebook blossomed and our “friends” found out who we were, what we liked, and how many friends we had in common. We filled the space between blogging and Facebook by tweeting constant notifications of every twist and turn in our daily lives.

What has ultimately emerged as the years and technology progressed over this digital decade is our complete and utter infatuation with the present. We are driven to update, to tweet, to post, to capture this moment. Now. The present.

Interestingly enough, as much as Jewish institutions have benefited from the technological advances of this past decade (you may be hearing this as a JTS podcast), Judaism itself sees the present not as something we can capture at any given moment, but rather as elusive, or better yet, impossible to articulate.

This week, Moses encounters God for the first time after fleeing the oppression and injustice he witnesses at the hand of the Egyptians. Tending the flock of his father-in-law, Moses guides his sheep deep into the wilderness where he experiences a revelation of God in the Burning Bush. He comes to learn that this God of his ancestors has recognized that it is time to redeem the people and bring them to their destined land. When Moses questions whether he is fitting for the task presented to him, God reassures him, insisting that the Divine Presence will be with him (Exod. 3:1–12).

While Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob experienced God in a similar formulaic manner, Moses’s experience differs significantly in the verses that follow.

Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” He continued, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you'” (Exod. 3:13–15a).

Moses comes to know God by a completely different name that is unique to his experience. But what is it about this particular appellation? The Torah and rabbinic literature are replete with names for God, but Moses alone comes to know God as Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.

Rabbi Alan Lew, (z”l), understands this moment as teaching us more about Moses than God. It is Moses’s consciousness that defines his relationship with God. His presence of mind at the burning bush inspires his understanding of and relationship to God:

Eventually, Moses will ask God God’s name, and God will reply, Eyeh chasher eyeh, “I Am That I Am,” or “I Will Be What I Will Be” (the tense is not clear), and then later, simply Yud Hey Vov Hey, the verb “to be” in the present tense. The name of God is the only way to express present-tense being in the Hebrew language; you cannot say, “I am tall,” you can only say, “I tall.” Only God can be the absolute present tense; humans can only approach this state. Even when we are present, mindful, flush with our experience, there is still a synapse of milliseconds between the experience itself and the time it takes our nervous system to process it. (One God Clapping, 260)

Moses is truly in this moment. That is why he comes to know God as “The Present.” He is, as Buber would suggest, in an “I and Thou” relationship with God. Present in the present, so to speak. As Rabbi Lew puts it (his passing last year left us wanting more instructing on living this teaching), “we are never really in our experience, just watching a movie of what happened several milliseconds ago, but the closer we get to being present, the closer we get to God.”

Our challenge for the coming decade is to redefine the present not as a time period, but a state of mind, and devote more of our time to updating our mindset rather than our Facebook status.

The publication and distribution of the JTS Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (z”l) Hassenfeld.

Q & A: Outreach

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Q Our church can’t seem to get an effective outreach effort going. What’s working these days?

A Recently I read about one church’s attempt at outreach that included hiring a petting zoo and giving elephant rides to get people in the door so the church could hit them up with a gospel presentation. With all due respect to that particular effort, I have a hard time believing that God needs a circus in order to connect with people in our communities.

A more effective and natural means of connecting with your community is to get involved with events and things already going on. As one critic of the church recently quipped, “How come you Christians don’t show up at anything that you can’t control?” That’s hard to hear, but worth considering.

Check out the community events calendar in your local newspaper and get involved! You’ll find things like book clubs, poetry readings, musical performances, ecological preservation gatherings, neighborhood association meetings, and more! Certainly these are the kinds of things Christians also enjoy and love, and they provide a natural platform of common interest on which to build relationships without any pretense or ulterior motive. There is certainly nothing wrong with having outreach events, but perhaps it’s our turn to show up.

—Bryan Berghoef

This FAQ appeared in the Banner in October 2010.


——————-
Q I often wonder if I’m a genuine Christian because I’m not actively sharing my faith. My attempts at outreach or evangelism seem phony and inappropriate.  What should I do?

A If you’re trying to talk to someone about your faith because you feel pressured to or because of some misconception about what a genuine Christian is, your attempts will be phony and inappropriate.

In our cultural context today, relationships are the most fertile ground for the gospel. The days of showing up and knocking on people’s doors with a “plan for their life” are over. Think of the last time a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon knocked on your door. What was your reaction?  Exactly.

Now think of the last time someone shared with you a favorite recipe or a story about how his child just learned to ride a bike or about a great movie she just watched—no doubt it was natural and unrehearsed. Sharing a story about God can and should be just like that.

A true Christian witness doesn’t need to think about saying the right thing or inserting the right verse because his or her life is focused on following Jesus and living out the kingdom of God. This kind of authentic faith speaks for itself.

Develop friendships with people outside of your Christian circle—people you meet at the bookstore, a favorite restaurant, or at the office. Invite a casual acquaintance over for dinner. Offer to help him with a house project. Get to know her over coffee. Seek such a person out as a friend rather than as a target, and your words and life will be seen and heard differently.

In this context faith issues can become a natural part of your conversations, rather than a forced and sudden presentation. Relax and entrust the whole thing to God. As you do, you’ll find that God has a way of arriving in unsurprising ways and places.

—Bryan Berghoef

This FAQ appeared in The Banner in April 2010.

A Deeper Life

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an interesting meditation I ran across recently:

Nothing seems to remain after life but a cast, an impression left by a once living being.

An enduring life, a life that could last through and beyond death, would have to be a deeper life than the ordinary.  It would have to be some life that men have without knowing it, some current that runs far beneath the surface.  To find it would be like seeing something fiery in the depths of life; it would be like hearing a rhythm in life that is not ordinarily heard.  The question is whether a man, if he found such a life, could bear to live it, whether he could live at that depth, whether he could live according to that rhythm.

The deeper life would be like an undertow, like a current that flows beneath the surface, a current that sets seaward or along the beach while the waves on the surface are breaking upon the shore.  The phases of life and the phases of civilization are like the waves, each phase swelling and dying away, each one rolling onto shore and breaking.  A life lived on the surface is like the surf itself, like the swell of the sea that breaks upon the shore, like the foam, the splash, the sound of breaking waves.  There is no swelling and breaking in the undertow, no foam, no splash, no sound.  Yet it is a powerful current and may move in a direction opposite to that of the waves, may move toward the open sea while they move toward the shore.

A man who gave himself to the deeper current of life might run a risk like that of a man who let himself be caught in the undertow.  It might be better for him to  float on the surface and let himself be carried to shore.  To live in accord with the deeper rhythm might be to ignore the surface rhythm of life.  It might mean missing the normal joys and cares of childhood, youth, manhood, and age.  It might mean plunging down into the depths of life to follow a light as elusive as sea fire.

by John S. Dunne, in “Time and Myth”

Opening Our Doors

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A church in west Michigan recently decided that it is no longer a “church,” but a religious community open to all beliefs.

Many are responding by declaring this a tragedy.

Now there is certainly something to mourn when a community seems to turn its back on its original tradition. Yet I wonder if the common reaction that this is a horrible and tragic event is the only way to view this. Perhaps our own response is in some ways the tragic one. We see this development and fear. We fear the unknown. We fear different beliefs. We fear unbelief.

But maybe there is a bright side here. This community is not turning its back on Christianity so much as openly welcoming people of various beliefs. There is something to admire in this, I would think.

Too many of us instantly invalidate any belief systems other than our own. We hear the words “Jew,” “Muslim” or “atheist” and assume there is nothing useful or valid in such perspectives. That itself is a tragedy.

Perhaps in our Christian religious communities, we have become like some of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, who had no space for anyone who had a thought or perspective that didn’t line up with their own. Jesus spent time with those who were marginalized in his society. Perhaps these people are the marginalized in ours.

In that light, maybe a church that decides to open its doors to such folks is not descending, but ascending. How? By acknowledging the image of God that is present in all of us — and being honest enough to engage and respect people with the positions they actually hold, rather than make sure they submit to a full doctrinal examination before they even are allowed in the door. One would hope that becoming more like Christ makes you more Christian, not less.

I wonder if this community, in making space for more than Christianity, will facilitate more honest interactions and conversations between Christians and those of other faiths than will ever happen in our traditional churches.

Some of you are thinking, “A worship service is really a gathering to worship God, and a Christian worship service is a gathering directed toward the triune God of historical Christianity, so clearly it is entirely appropriate for such a gathering to be strictly ‘Christian.'”

Yes. I agree. But the truth is, most people of other faiths would likely never even contemplate showing up for a gathering at our churches, and I can’t help but think that Jesus, in all his Jewishness and lack of proper attire, might not be welcome there either.

The communities I grew up in were not lacking in such churches.

What they were lacking were places where the religious space is open to honest dialogue and interaction, where people can be respected — whatever their views.

Far from a tragedy, I would say this change is a welcome addition to the spiritual landscape.

—–
Bryan Berghoef is the pastor of Watershed Church, located at the Village in the Grand Traverse Commons. He also facilitates weekly Pub Theology conversations at Right Brain Brewery and is a member of ACORD: The Area Council on Religious Diversity.

This article originally appeared  in the Traverse City Record-Eagle on August 21, 2010.

August Rush

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August is a crazy month!  We’ve had a family reunion, friends moving, friends visiting, and next week — in a span of less than seven days — we will close on a house, move into it, and then depart for the Mediterranean for two weeks.  Israel and Turkey are our destination.  My sister, who is coming north to watch the kids, will spend a full weekend in our new house before my wife and I will!  So this month has been a hive of preparing to move (again), as well as preparing for a terrific two week study trip.

You can the progress of Christy and I on our trip at our Turkey blog site:  In the Footsteps of the Disciples.

How are we preparing? Reading books on the Apostle Paul, Revelation, and the early church.  I recently finished “The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary from the Church’s Conservative Icon”, and am working on “Paul” by NT Wright.  I am midway through “Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now” – highly recommended.

Also doing some exercising, as we will be hiking four to six miles a day as we visit some incredible archaeological ruins.  Further, doing some memorizing of biblical texts, as well as learning things about these cities we will be visiting such as key temples and social factors, as well as geographical details such as significant rivers, mountains, and other realities.

We are also packing – trying to pack light but also be prepared for possible scenarios — such as no toilet paper in the bathrooms (a common occurrence in Turkey – I’ve been in that situation, no toilet paper, no toilet, just a hole in the ground, and if you’re lucky, a bucket of water.  Enough details.).

We will be traveling to many of the early church sites on our trip.  After a few days in Galilee, we will go where the disciples went from their early rural roots into the more cosmopolitan and Hellenistic territory of Asia Minor.  As they encounter cities like Ephesus, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Philadelphia and Smyrna, how did they deal with the reality of the Roman Empire and pagan religions which everywhere promoted “peace, prosperity, freedom and salvation”?  What did it mean to call Jesus “Lord” in a culture that was convinced Caesar was Lord?  What in the world is really going on in the crazy apocalyptic book of Revelation?  Was it about some future cataclysmic clash of good and evil?  These are some of the exciting things we will be learning as we travel from Bethsaida, Capernaum and Tiberius in Galilee to Cappadocia, Galatia, Lycia and Phrygia in Asia Minor.

Check back for updates, and check out our trip blog!

Hey, Jealousy

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Some thoughts on jealousy from a recent Watershed gathering

–
–
–
It starts when we’re young-
you’re on the playground at recess…
playing with friends…
when you notice that Joey over there seems to have more friends than you do…
everyone goes up to him to hang out, to ask what we’re doing today.

You seem to be off on your own.. on the edge of what’s happening.
Wishing they would come up to you instead…

—
And you get to high school and things aren’t so different
she seems to get whatever she wants.
Wears nicer clothes.
More boys ask her out.

She seems to laugh so easily.
And you sit alone, wishing the boys would glance at you for once instead…

—
And the years pass.
And you’re at work,
you’re doing well, and you’ve got a great idea for a new project
And you schedule a meeting with the boss…
And just as you are about to have your moment of glory.
He busts in unannounced and drops a folder on the bosses desk with some new proposal,
muttering some pathetic apology about not making an appt.

But before you can recover the boss is grinning from ear to ear and
heaping praise on him that should have been yours.

And the bitterness inside grows a little more.

—
Why do her kids always seem so well-behaved?
Why do they get to go on such great vacations?
Why does he get so much credit when I work just as hard?
Why don’t I have such a great house…?
Why didn’t my great play make the softball game recap?

Jealousy begins when the attention moves from “here” to “there”,
and in many ways is our natural response.
We don’t like that.
So what’s important is how we respond to those initial feelings.
Jealousy unchecked leads to discontentment, which leads to hatred, which leads to brokenness within us and around us.

1 Samuel 18 is a story that is all about jealousy and the downward spiral it can lead us on. David is becoming increasingly successful, and Saul cannot stand it. The attention is shifting to someone else, and the fire of Saul’s jealousy grows hotter and hotter. In the end, we read that Saul instructs his men and Jonathan to cause the death of David.

In other words, as long as I exist, he cannot.
This is jealousy full-grown.

We’re far more familiar with jealousy than we’d like to think.  We live with jealousy.  We know it well.  And perhaps we’ve even begun to depend on it.

READINGS ON JEALOUSY
–
Jealousy has 
frightening eyes.
Jealousy has 
grinding teeth.
Jealousy has 
a cunning face.
–
Jealousy can live
Without a mind,
Without a heart,
Without a soul,
Even without God.
–
Human jealousy
And divine ecstasy
Are eternal strangers.
–
Jealousy
is
an aggressive boxer,
A repulsive dancer,
A hopeless singer
And a useless storyteller.
–
Jealousy,
Before you entered 
into my life,
I was the world’s
Richest prince.
Now that you are in me
And I am for you,
I have become
The poorest street-beggar
–
Jealousy,
You are my constant
Nightmare.
You are my constant
Unwelcome companion.
–
Jealousy,
You are your own
Ultimate
Self-destructive indulgence.
–
Shortest is the distance
From jealousy to hell.

POEM ON JEALOUSY

Jealousy,
where do you erupt from,
when you rear your torrid head?

Seething like a volcano,
waiting to pour upon me

Something that I dread
Deep down inside me wells,
a flaming moment

Do not test me,
for I may sear your fragile wings
The curse of any sane man
A torrid lesson in the well of turbulence

Emotions of fear and loss,
do not tempt me with your plot
Jealousy,
I tell you,
go to hell and rot

By Peta Cameron
—
We spend so much of our life comparing:
I wish I had his job, or her brains, or his personality, or her abilities.

We spend our lives wanting the attention, wanting to be front and center –
but the biblical writers continually state that only one deserves the glory – and it’s not us.

What would it look like to become a community of people who celebrate when others succeed?  Who see someone else’s success as good for all of us?

Remember when the disciples argue about who will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven?  What did Jesus say?  “Whoever wants to be great must be your servant…  Whoever wants to be first must become last.”

You see, in the kingdom of God, things are turned on their head.
When we try to exalt ourselves – more often than not, it backfires.
But when we swallow our pride,
when we serve in humility and obscurity,
when we wait in faith –
that’s when we see more clearly the God who is already in our midst.

That’s when we see Jesus,
who being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing.

Nothing.

If that’s the path Jesus had to walk for you and I,
what makes us think that following him is going to look any different?

LOST: The Happy End

Culture, Entertainment, Theology Comments are closed

OK, I’ve come across many other theories/takes/reviews of the finale that are more hopeful than mine, so I’m going to repost my favorites here (so you’re not all depressed by reading mine):

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From Angela:

It seemed to me that the finale demonstrated that everything in Season’s 1-5 WAS incredibly important and REAL. (struggles with good and evil, faith and science, humanity vs the divine, mystery vs. fact)…. That there was huge significance to their actions and a greater purpose. I saw the sideways timeline or ‘hereafter’ as their ‘awakening’ persay… only in that could they finally grasp the fuller meaning of their journey , they got the impact of something bigger and insight into the significance of their actions… and in essence found peace and moved on. I also got the impression that the ‘moving on’ was just the start of another journey with greater dimension. I found it very hopeful. It seemed like only the characters ‘got it’ at the end… and appropriately… we won’t get it fully where we sit in time.

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From Andy:

The ending of Lost somewhat blew me away last night. What do you make of the show, and what does it all mean? Here’s my best theory.

Let’s say you could go back and try to live your life again with the knowledge you have now. Would you? Have you been face-to-face with your own brokenness, and would you re-do something if you could? I think we all have regrets- and the Losties have bigger regrets than many of us do. And when they set off a nuclear explosion to “reset” the clock of human history, they reset themselves (a kind of re-incarnation) with the wisdom gained on the island. Sawyer doesn’t turn to a life of crime, Ben Linus finds contentment in service, etc. But there is something missing. Love. None of them have the person they loved in the original timeline. And so Desmond is on a journey to reintroduce these characters to the love that they are missing.

And as Jack saves the island and leaves Hurley and Ben to run things (what a team!), the real story is how the characters have found love (and therefore some kind of redemption) and can break free from the cycles in which they have been trapped. That could explain why they go into a church with more symbols of Far Eastern religion than I have ever seen in a church. It’s because they are breaking the cycle and love truly is setting them free.

And that’s why Ben can’t go into the church. His love has always been for Alex, and she is not there yet. He is a person who has never really received love in his entire life, except from Hurley to some extent (being recruited). He still has to work out what love really means.

In short, the finale surprised the daylights out of me. But in the end, it went deeper than “what happens when the smoke monster dies?” and went to the very heart of being human – a longing to love and be loved. And so I might be in the minority, but I am gradually falling in love with the end of Lost.

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From Dennis:

You can interpret LOST to have some Christian themes – afterlife and redemption and ekklesia (community / needing others) and tons of subtext spirituality. But those themes are not exclusively Christian.

So, aside from the philosophical undertones and the ending that will leave everyone talking… what has been the writer’s underlining message?

For me, I believe the message is one of redemption – but I think it was encapsulated in the idea that we need help from others and we need to work through our issues within community. After watching the recap show and rewatching the Pilot, I see this theme developing. And from two generations that prize community SO much, while achieving so very little of it — the desire for community is a powerful one.

I think most poignantly was John Locke’s final words to Jack, “I hope somebody helps you as you have helped me”.

Live Together, Die Alone.  Namaste.

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From “The Guy Who Supposedly Worked at Bad Robot”:

Sideways world is where it gets really cool in terms of theology and metaphysical discussion (for me at least — because I love history/religion theories and loved all the talks in the writer’s room about it). Basically what the show is proposing is that we’re all linked to certain people during our lives. Call them soulmates (though it’s not exactly the best word). But these people we’re linked to are with us duing “the most important moments of our lives” as Christian said. These are the people we move through the universe with from lifetime to lifetime. It’s loosely based in Hinduisim with large doses of western religion thrown into the mix.

The conceit that the writers created, basing it off these religious philosophies, was that as a group, the Lostaways subconsciously created this “sideways” world where they exist in purgatory until they are “awakened” and find one another. Once they all find one another, they can then move on and move forward. In essence, this is the show’s concept of the afterlife. According to the show, everyone creates their own “Sideways” purgatory with their “soulmates” throughout their lives and exist there until they all move on together. That’s a beautiful notion. Even if you aren’t religious or even spirtual, the idea that we live AND die together is deeply profound and moving.

It’s a really cool and spirtual concept that fits the whole tone and subtext the show has had from the beginning. These people were SUPPOSED to be together on that plane. They were supposed to live through these events — not JUST because of Jacob. But because that’s what the universe or God (depending on how religious you wish to get) wanted to happen. The show was always about science vs faith — and it ultimately came down on the side of faith. It answered THE core question of the series. The one question that has been at the root of every island mystery, every character backstory, every plot twist. That, by itself, is quite an accomplishment.

How much you want to extrapolate from that is up to you as the viewer. Think about season 1 when we first found the Hatch. Everyone thought that’s THE answer! Whatever is down there is the answer! Then, as we discovered it was just one station of many. One link in a very long chain that kept revealing more, and more of a larger mosiac.

But the writer’s took it even further this season by contrasting this Sideways “purgatory” with the Island itself. Remember when Michael appeared to Hurley, he said he was not allowed to leave the Island. Just like the MIB. He wasn’t allowed into this sideways world and thus, was not afforded the opportunity to move on. Why? Because he had proven himself to be unworthy with his actions on the Island. He failed the test. The others, passed. They made it into Sideways world when they died — some before Jack, some years later. In Hurley’s case, maybe centuries later. They exist in this sideways world until they are “awakened” and they can only move on TOGETHER because they are linked. They are destined to be together for eternity. That was their destiny.

They were NOT linked to Anna Lucia, Daniel, Roussou, Alex, Miles, Lupidis, (and all the rest who weren’t in the chuch — basically everyone who wasn’t in season 1). Yet those people exist in Sideways world. Why? Well again, here’s where they leave it up to you to decide. The way I like to think about it, is that those people who were left behind in Sideways world have to find their own soulmates before they can wake up. It’s possible that those links aren’t people from the island but from their other life (Anna’s parnter, the guy she shot — Roussou’s husband, etc etc).

A lot of people have been talking about Ben and why he didn’t go into the Church. And if you think of Sideways world in this way, then it gives you the answer to that very question. Ben can’t move on yet because he hasn’t connected with the people he needs to. It’s going to be his job to awaken Roussou, Alex, Anna Lucia (maybe), Ethan, Goodspeed, his father and the rest. He has to attone for his sins more than he did by being Hurley’s number two. He has to do what Hurley and Desmond did for our Lostaways with his own people. He has to help them connect. And he can only move on when all the links in his chain are ready to. Same can be said for Faraday, Charlotte, Whidmore, Hawkins etc. It’s really a neat, and cool concept. At least to me.

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From Nikita:

I have to start by saying that I loved the ending, every bit of it and I don’t agree with the idea that i’m not critiquing the show logically. We’re dealing with a show that’s fundamentally about science vs faith and the reason why it became so famous is that every season finale gave people the opportunity to answer the questions, based on their own personal beliefs. If the writers had sat down and given us a detailed a=b and c=d finale, the basic appeal of the show is just “lost”. I hated the episodes about the temple as much as the next person, but the show started with these total strangers who we discovered were connected to each other and ended with them knowing how they were connected to each other….i can see why so many people would hate that, but you have to give the writers some points for being so poetic about it.

The numbers were around much before the Dharma initiative, which we know from the names in Jacob’s cave. My guess is, Jacob wrote a whole bunch of names with their respective numbers on the cave walls and the island, in all its mysterious glory, gave special importance to 4 8 15 16 23 and 42 coz those just happened to be the numbers of our beloved Losties.

And as far as why Aaron was still a baby in the Church is concerned, my only guess is that we have to try and understand what exactly Christian meant by “there is no now”. This limbo that the losties were in isn’t in any real time that we can identify or even comprehend. It’s completely a mystical/religious concept and even though I don’t have an exact answer to it, I only know that Aaron as a BABY was connected to these people and not Aaron as a grown up.

Loved the show, loved the finale, loved being lost (couldn’t resist the pun :D)


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And my favorite:

NEW YORK—Desperate fans of the recently concluded television series Lost are speculating that the program is continuing on in a parallel dimension somewhere, and that alternate versions of showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are currently writing new episodes of the series. “It’s very possible that a sideways world running concurrent to our own exists, and that a facsimile of myself is happy, fulfilled, and already gearing up for the season seven premiere of Lost,” said 36-year-old Kevin Molinaro, who, along with more than 20 million other hopeless fans, has recently booked multiple roundtrip tickets from Los Angeles to Australia in hopes of traveling through a vortex in the space-time continuum. “I just have to find a way to get there. We all do.” According to data from Google analytics, searches for “How to build/detonate/use a hydrogen bomb to open up a multidimensional wormhole” have increased 10 millionfold since the episode aired.

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And the last link I’ll put is an excellent review that is part critical, part hopeful, perhaps the best I’ve read, from Amy @ a chase after wind:
LOST: Time to Let Go

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