The Passages That Crank My Engine

Haven't been too active on the old blog lately.  Been real busy and plus I often think I should post more often but then realize I don't have much to say. At least not that doesn't deserve to be seriously scrutinized and filtered(Hah!) But I have desired to get back to writing, if only occasionally.

Last night I embarked on a process of re-memorizing some passages that are very important to me.  By "re-memorzing" I mean polishing up my ability to recite them. Having once memorized them thoroughly, they had fallen into disuse and therefore needed some oil to flow freely once again. My method has previously been to read and then recite, over and over again, until the words are embedded in my mind. This time however, I tried typing/writing the words out repeatedly, with much quicker results. I found myself memorizing longer passages more quickly.

They're my favorite passages because they're Christological. Highly Christological.  They're passages that are full of exaltation for the Jesus "for whom and by whom all things exist." To be honest, for me this practice has probably taken the place of the worship music phenomenon, something I was once highly addicted to, and thoroughly convinced was at the heart of belonging to Jesus, following Jesus, knowing Jesus. (I'm now convinced that more often than not it's an exercise in sub-Gospel narcissism, and completely non-essential to knowing and following him.)

I welcome other passage suggestions to be added.  I have not already memorized all of these, and I suppose I'll keep expanding the list to outdistance any sort of final success to be expected on my part.  I think I may embark on the project of writing a bit on each of these passages as well.  Here are the passages(addresses only, I'll let you look them up):

John 1:1-18.  Should be at least as well known as John 3:16.  Radically exaltating.  To begin a book this way leaves no room for doubt about intentions, about whom it is that is being worshipped.

John 6: 47-58.  Everything's here: the Gospel, in poetic, prophetic language(v. 51), A Jesus-tinted interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures(v. 49-50), an allusion to Eucharistic practice and what's at its heart, and Jesus' fixation on making himself out to be the most satisfying thing in the universe.  If he's not God, he's a complete megalomaniac.

John 15:1-17. I suppose I could simply put the entire book of John on my "to memorize" list. This chapter, set in the longer discourse of ch. 14-18, has been for me the blueprint for what it means to live the Jesus-life, to walk the Jesus-way, to expect a Jesus-shaped imprint of the hidden God.  The abide chapter.  Obedience is loving him. The law is summed up as loving one another, and the way to obedience is being fascinated with him.  Truly this kind of  Gospel is accessible to all, even the most undisciplined or sin-sick.

Colossians 1:13-29.  Jesus-saturated. Again, no room for interpretation about what lies at the center of a believer's life.  The Jesus-exalting language is heart stopping. Try reading it with a vocal emphasis every time the words "he", "him", or "Jesus Christ" appear.  Now where are the worship song lyrics that sound like that?

Hebrews 1:1-4.  A lovely beginning to what seems to me to be one of the most highly Christological books of the NT.  Establishes some serious identity questions in a very worshipful manner.

Hebrews 2:10-18.  Solidifies, like much of Hebrews, the expectation of suffering for his children.  It also gives them a grid for accepting redemptive suffering. Cross-shaped living. The fear of death is the problem.  The Resurrection, which has destroyed the works of the devil, is the solution.

Pastors are Laymen Too

I found this at Blogotional.  I SO resonate with the sentiment. He's responding to a specific statement by a pastor, basically saying pastoral ministry is the highest calling in the world, yada yada(in other words: "vocational ministry" people are more spiritual than "laymen"):

I hate to break this to you, but you are not THAT special. And the sooner you realize that, the better your ministry will be. You are not smarter than the rest of us. You have a heavy burden, but then so do we all. YOU are not here to save us, or the church - that is God's business - you are just a tool in the effort - AS ARE THE REST OF US.

By the way, that should, LIFT a burden, not lay one on.  Hee hee.

Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Unapproachable Light

The other day Wikipedia yielded me a rather academic explanation of Schrodinger's Cat. The phrase had jumped out at me twice in one day and I figured I better look it up, since I have the information superhighway at my fingertips. After Wikipedia and a little digging from friends on Facebook(SUCH reliable sources!) I discovered the what the thought experiment known as “Schrodinger's Cat” is all about.

Schrodinger was a physicist and a contemporary of Einstein. In fact they were friends. Evidently due to some radical physics discovery of their day, related to the theory of relativity, it's understood that a particle, say an atom's nucleus, actually has multiple simultaneous positions, in a given system at a particular moment in time.

…

Yes, what I just said was, it's in two places at once.

Or maybe more than that- it may actually be in an infinite number of places at once, or something. Please forgive my lack of education on this, if I get facts wrong, it's cause I'm running with something I just read about for the first time in a field that's way over my head.

If I understand correctly, light shined through piece of cardboard with two slits in it, if conceived of as a particle, can be shown to have passed through both slits simultaneously. So what theyr'e saying is, the position, actual place where a particle seems to be is not as cut and dried as we thought. Physics tells us this, it's not speculation.

Back to the cat. Schrodinger imagined a box in which a cat was placed, and which also contained a vial of poisonous gas. A hammer has a fifty percent chance of breaking the glass in five minutes time. The hammer is hooked up to a Geiger counter which is monitoring a piece of plutonium whose half-life is 5 minutes, should it decompose, the hammer falls, and breaks the vial, poisoning the cat.

Or something like that. The idea is that in five minutes, the cat might die or might stay alive. The box is closed so the observer cannot see the “system” enclosed. The idea Schrodinger postulated was that, given the discovery of matter being “relatively” positioned, meaning that it's position sort of depends on whether or not it's being observed, the radioactive particle, with respect to the scientist, is both in a state of decomposition and not simultaneously. Meaning that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.

Poor thing. It would be so much more comfortable if it made up its mind. Seriously though, this is the conclusion he came to based on the particle theory(which I have such a weak grasp on) that was being worked on at the time.

I might have a bunch of this wrong, and you can look it up yourself, or correct me if you're a physicist, but I think I understand that the experiment, while speculative, is a fairly accurate picture of the implications of the theory. In other words, reality is much less “definite” than we thought.

Heisenberg said something similar. Evidnently if you try to measure a particle's position and vector simultaneously, you can't do it. If you pinpoint it's position at a moment in time, the vector(a statistic based on velocity and direction) is immeasurable. If you accurately find it's velocity and direction, it's actual position becomes fuzzy, and eludes perfect measurement. It appears to be in multiple positions at the same time. The implication is the same: matter isn't necessarily where you think it is. The more definite you try to become the more it evades your definition. The car driving past me down the road is technically in a number of places at once, depending on your position. It's not “relativism” it's “relativity.”

There's an connection here that I haven't heard made yet, perhaps because until recently it was so rare to find theistic people interested in the hard sciences.

The Orthodox have a way of approaching deity that is called “apophatic.” This means that in order to accurately speak of God, you can not quite describe him, you have to describe what he is not. You sort of have to describe the space around him, and then begin to pick up a shape that is suggestive of who he is. He's in the “negative space” of what is not being described, so to speak.  God is not created.  He is not male or female.  He does not have five senses therefore he does not "see" as we do. 

He dwells in unapproachable light.  The cloud of unknowing that the mystics speak of. 

Of course, for the Christian he has been “pinned down,” that is, interpreted perfectly for human minds. This is what Jesus is- the “one mediator between God and man.” He is the way men may know God, and what his intentions are. The problem being, we humans have the funniest way of naming Jesus according to our own designs. He is the “I AM,” the self-identifying one, the one who no one must presume to form in their own image. Yet we do just that, and disastrous things result. Each iteration of the Church has begun with a grasp on a very important “picture” of who Jesus is, what the Gospel means, and what the Kingdom of God looks like. And it manifests in a particular way. But in time, with what one sociologist called the “routinization of charisma,” the order gets reversed. God, we begin to think, serves our particular manifestation. He's bending to our will. We've got this particular way of doing things, and that's the way God wants them done. He must think very highly of us, since we've got things down so well.

And off it goes all to hell, these golden calfs that are designed to glorify God and end up being tools for rebellious people to remake him in their own image. The I AM. He can't be defined, except by himself. Which is why Jesus himself is the definition of God, but human faith-response to Jesus and it's fruit, while expected and inevitable, do not define God. Nor do they need to always stay the same in order for God to be present and at work redemptively. When the defining of God becomes the business of spirituality, things go off the rails. Why? Because it's not God's design to be simply known about. Even the demons do that. His design is that we love him.

Why does the particle elude having its position defined? Why is reality so much sketchier than we thought- at least when one tries to pinpoint its exact position? Because the Maker didn't design it to be defined. He designed it to be enjoyed. Taste and see. It's good. It testifes to the goodness of the Maker. It's his way of showing us how much he loves us. It's proves his intentions aren't malevolent. But the closer one intends to get to knowing the exact nature of something is the closer one gets to misusing it and committing idolatry. It shouldn't take too long to think of examples of this from all over the religious spectrum.

It's like the parable of the tribe of curious seekers in the wilderness who had cut open the antelope to try and find out where the life came from. Obviously, they would have been better off simply watching and wondering at the thing as it bounded through the fields. True science begins with delight.

And no, this is not a diatribe against science or discovery or the research that led to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and other fascinating laws of physics. I think these things should be enjoyed:)

Yes I just used a smiley face.