back with a vengeance

So I've been anxiously trying to ease my way back into the blogging world with some smooth and witty catch up entry but I've realized those are uncomfortable for everyone. Instead I think I'll just dive right in and share some thoughts I've been cranking out while studying for my Christian Theology class.

Our text is "Faith Seeking Understanding" by Daniel Migliore (amongst many others) and I came across some very stirring passages.

Indulge me. If you dare.

"Questions arise at the edges of what we can know and what we can do as human beings. They thrust themselves on us with special force in times and situations of crisis such as sickness, suffering, guilt, injustice, personal or social upheaval, and death. Believers are not immune to the questions that arise in these situations. Indeed, they may be more perlexed than others because they have to relate their faith to what is happening in their lives and in the world. Precisely as believers, they experience the frequent and disturbing incongruity between faith and lived reality. They believe in a sovereign and good God, but they live in a world where evil often seems triumphant. They believe in a living Lord, but more often than not they experience the absence rather than the presence of God. They believe in the transforming power of the Spirit of God, but they know all too well of the impotence of the church and of themselves. They know that they should obey God's will, but they find that it is often difficult to know what God's will is in regard to particular issues. And even whey they know God's will, they frequently resist doing it. Christian faith asks questions, seeks understanding, both because God is always greater than our ideas of God, and because the public world that faith inhabits confronts it with challenges and contradictions that can't be ignored."
-Faith Seeking Understanding -Daniel Migliore

If this were a dish I had just finished I would kiss my fingers and say, "Delicious."

"If we believe in God, we will have to become seekers, pilgrims, pioneers with no permanent residence. We will no longer be satisfied with the unexamined beliefs and practices of our everyday personal and social world. If we believe in God, we will necessarily question the gods of power, wealth, nationality, and race that clamor for our allegiance. Christian faith is thinking faith."

I have a hard time with the intensity of the Old Testament but I will say that this idea helps me to relate to the Israelites. Christianity is very much a pilgrimage. Just as the Israelites spent hundreds of years in constant chaos and flux, modern Christians face increasingly irreconcilable mystery. The Israelites were challenged with believing in and following God at a time when things kept going from bad to worse (with a few small vacations.) They were charged with interpreting God correctly amidst all the noise of sin going on around them. Christians today face innumerable distractions. And while the Israelites struggled to overcome their fixation on false gods, we struggle to ignore the temptations of consumerism and self-indulgence.

The Israelites put their hand in the fire over and over again (oftentimes admittedly) and so do we. Put this on a larger scale and it's easy to correlate our sins (gluttony, pride, greed) with the current state of the world. Just as the Israelites kept reaping their misfortune, we too are asking for trouble (and getting it!) with the way we treat each other and the place we live.

Of course, this isn't merely Christians. Every human being is in some way responsible for the way the world looks when they leave it. But, the Israelites were not alone either. They were a small portion of a larger world population, too.

Ah, I digress. (It's always fun to find an appropriate place to use that phrase!) The point is, oftentimes I feel alienated by the Old Testament: unable to relate or identify. I think many Christians do. As a Christian I sometimes feel like the Old Testament is off limits, perhaps I may offend someone who sees my identifying with the Old Testament as intrusive or even silly. Yet, I see that my Christian faith relies on it so I struggle to find a connection.

Well, thanks to my first week in Christian Theology...thar she blows.