28
May
I posted this on Twitter and Facebook yesterday but since I had a post up I decided to let that one stay up and post this today. This compilation is just because I felt like it. Hope you enjoy!
27
May
The following thoughts were inspired by this post from Tony Woodlief. I have been trying to formulate a coherent presentation for all the angles from which my thoughts are coming and I am not entirely sure I have done so but I think I have figured out a manner in which to present them that shouldn’t get anyone too lost. This will be a series of posts as there just too much to put into a single post and not have it be the length of a doctoral thesis. This first post is for the purpose of explaining my background and thus my approach to the issue at hand.
I grew up in the Word of Faith (WOF) movement and because of that I have certain theological baggage that doesn’t make sense to some folks. This baggage includes views on baptism, communion, salvation and so on. Mostly I have an animosity for the idea of God as a gumball machine into which one puts faith and receives miracles in return. It’s not quite as offensive as Calvin’s idea of God as a spoiled three year old but it’s close. I have to be careful where I tread here as most of my family is still involved with this theology that I consider to be the work of charlatans. It’s not that I don’t want to offend them, I do that enough in person, but rather that I don’t want to dive off track and end up ranting about WOF rather than the issues at hand and yes I realize I haven’t even defined the issue yet but I am getting there. The background is as important as the issue for this post so bear with me. (Unless of course you followed the above link then you know where I am going to end up).
When I realized that the religion being taught in the pulpits of the churches I had to attend with my parents did not line up with the book the pastors who taught it claimed to believe without questioning I retreated from church altogether. Actually that’s an understatement. I left the church and vacillated between outright occult practices to apathy towards religion altogether. I won’t get into any of the details here but suffice it to say I didn’t just get upset at the people teaching the bad doctrine I got upset at, as the Nicene Creed puts it, the one holy catholic and apostolic church and pretty much took it out on myself. I returned to the church armed with all of the knowledge I ad acquired reading scripture growing up and a complete lack of wisdom concerning its meaning. I studied fervently and continue to do so however I am not without blind spots and this issue was one of my blind spots until Tony brought it up in the context contained in the above post. The issue is children and communion and at it was one I never even considered but rather just did it as I always had. I don’t know if that will change, I have a strong feeling it will, but even if it doesn’t I can say it is something I have considered and not something I explain the reasons for doing what I have always done.
Christ’s command is to “take and eat”–not “take and understand.” – C.S. Lewis
I suppose I should start with my views on communion as an act or sacrament before I get into the specific practices of myself as a father, the tradition of our churches, and the practices of the churches we have attended. Mine is not an easy position to explain because, in short, it’s not explicable. I know that sounds like a cop-out but let me assure you that it is not. I will try to put these beliefs into words for the sake of having them to reference at later points in this series of points:
- There is a Real Presence in the elements of communion
- The method by which the actual body and blood of Christ is manifested in the elements is a mystery
- Low church Protestants such as the bodies of believers I have associated my family with do not revere communion nearly enough
- Low church Protestants do a disservice to themselves and those they attempt to bring to Christ by substituting grape juice for wine
- Communion is more than a remembrance and to refer to it as “only” a remembrance may be heretical
- Communion should be an act that connects us to Christ by consuming His body and blood
The points above do not do justice to my beliefs in communion but for this series of posts they will have to suffice as I have no better words by which to describe them. Most low church Protestants cannot even explain what their beliefs concerning communion are that deeply. In fact most of them cannot explain beyond it’s something that Christ did and we do because He told us to. Most of them don’t know that grape juice has been used for less than two hundred years, less than a single tenth of the time Christianity has been around, in communion and that the practice started with the Temperance Movement. The Temperance Movement was a prudish 19th century movement that started in America that claimed all use of alcohol was sinful, ignoring the scriptures on this matter, and this attitude is still present in some churches today. Some churches don’t believe that drinking is in and of itself sinful but still serve grape juice under the guise of caring for recovering alcoholics when not even the most cult-like twelve step programs consider communion to be a slip or a detriment to a body’s sobriety. They make this claim by way of explanation and in my opinion are merely justifying doing it the way they have always done it because change is scary. Most low church Christians don’t even realize that the majority of the Body of Christ still use wine in communion. The WOF movement is no different in this matter and I have even heard WOFers claim “any alcohol at all is drunkenness because if you have one drink you are one drink drunk” thereby showing a complete lack of understanding of the scriptures. They explain away Paul’s admonition to take a little bit of wine for a stomach problems and Christ’s drinking of wine with a concept absent in scripture: the concept of “new wine” which in their estimation is “un-fermented wine” meaning grape juice. They have built a practice that is not what is commanded by our Lord and Saviour and claim that it is communion and have to resort to ignoring or explaining away scripture in order to justify their practice.
And yet I remain a low church Protestant but for how much longer I cannot say as the more I contemplate this and other issues the more I realize just how wrong our practices are…
Now this is where this piece might get a little confusing so bear with me through this please. Low church Protestants believe, at least a vast majority of them, that communion is a remembrance only and that there is no presence of Christ in the elements aside from our remembrance of his sacrifice. This is explained, somewhat, by saying the major beliefs concerning Real Presence are never mentioned in scripture. These major beliefs are Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, Holy Mystery and pneumatic presence and are held by Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and Calvinists respectively. Of course that is an oversimplification but for my current purpose that is enough explanation of the varying views. Most low church Protestants bristle at the idea of a Real Presence because they have been taught that it is a Catholic belief and they can’t let any of the icky Catholic belief get on them because it might be contagious so they sit in their belief, invented by Zwingli during the Reformation, defending it lest they start acting like those heathen Catholics. Now if you think the division of denominations on communion is sickening then join the crowd. The only saving grace for me, at the moment, is that the branch of churches I attend doesn’t take a doctrinal stand on this and I am welcome at the table regardless of my belief in Real Presence. However the more I reflect on this issue the more I wonder if I have ever actually taken communion to begin with. Not because of any apostolic issues but rather because we are not actually following what Christ told us to do. I once had a pastor ask me “Can’t Christ work through grape juice as well as through wine?” and it satisfied me at the time. I am starting to feel like that doesn’t even address the issue. The answer to that question is a resounding yes but the question is not really of the elements but one of obedience. Do we dare ask the Father to act through an act of outright disobedience? How arrogant are we?
Furthermore low church Protestants will proclaim loudly that Christ was speaking in metaphor and analogy when the said “…this is my body…this is my blood” the same as when he said “I am the door…” and ignore the fact for the more than fifteen hundred years no-one questioned the presence of Christ in the elements. The will hide behind Sola Scriptura which they cannot prove using the scriptures alone and explain away tradition as completely man made. This doesn’t jive with the beliefs over the majority of the time Christianity has existed nor does it line up with the views of the majority Christianity presently. I know that majority opinion isn’t the best way to decide theology but this is a belief that has existed since the earliest writings concerning Christianity so the majority of the time point is a valid point and the fact that it is a persistent belief also is a point that should be considered. This belief wasn’t challenged until the Reformation which also gave us such gems as burning teachers of rival doctrine at the stake, Calvinism with its God that acts like spoiled child, and more wonderful division in the body of Christ. So why would we cling to a belief that derived from a movement whose mission was to divide the body of Christ? My answer is that I have no idea why we do much less why we should.
Summing up this first piece is simple. My beliefs on communion differ from a majority of the people who attend the churches I have attended and would shock most of them. I firmly believe that, even thought I truly love the churches we attend, we are doing it wrong start to finish. I am questioning whether or not I have ever even received communion to begin with. Now I actually didn’t know where this piece was going to end up. I wasn’t sure which path this line of thought would take and while I fully intend to address the original issue that Tony’s article inspired me to think about I think I may have to do so with the caveat that I will be addressing the point of view of the leadership of my church and not from my own beliefs and I think I need to sit down and have a long hard conversation with my pastor about this topic because I believe that it is possibly the most important topic confronting my family today.
The lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles himself that for our salvation he hides himself under an ordinary piece of bread! Brothers, look at the humility of God, and pour out your hearts before him! – St. Francis of Assisi
25
May
What with our fearless leader taking his second vacation since the disaster in the Gulf or Mexico and not attending the Memorial Day services at Arlington National Cemetery, the Koreas gearing up for war, and Google violating our privacy there’s nothing left to do but give the hell up apparently. No, seriously, everything is evil and we should all give up. *Sigh* If only it were that easy…
Obama is, in my opinion and regardless of any differing viewpoints, making a huge mistake skipping the Memorial Day services at Arlington. I really don’t care that he’s vacationing during the disaster in the Gulf since he can’t do a damn thing about it. Hell the government as a whole really can’t do anything about it. BP is doing everything they can to stop the flow of oil and the government is merely looking on right now. Why shouldn’t fearless leader take a vacation? If there is nothing you can do about a situation then trying to preside over it makes you look impotent. Obama is getting out of the way and letting the work get done to stop this disaster from becoming worse and that’s not a bad thing. Snubbing the troops by skipping the services at Arlington? That’s a whole other matter. No sitting POTUS should ever miss Memorial Day at Arlington. They are after all Commander in Chief. How can any soldier be comfortable following orders from a commander who doesn’t even respect the most basic traditions? Now I am not saying any soldier should refuse to follow lawful orders but the moral of the troops is an important thing and Obama is too selfish to bother coming to an event that is important to many soldiers both past and present. I don’t have a lot of respect for the boy-band-in-the-white-house for various reasons and just lost a little more of it.
Meanwhile some Aussie politician is claiming Google is violating people’s privacy by collecting data about wi-fi access points. I don’t care about the laws governing this in any given country this is a matter of friggin’ common sense. If you put up a transmitter that transmits a signal onto public property, like a street, and don’t secure it then there is nothing private about it and to be frank you should have no expectation that there will be. This gentles also seems to be up in arms about the whole taking pictures thing that streetview cars do as well which is another bit stupidity. If something is visible from public property, again like a street, then it’s not private by definition. It seems to me that a lot of people have lost their minds when it comes to Google and just want Google to get in trouble no matter what they do. I may not like all of Google’s policies and it’s starting to look like Google is the Microsoft of the internet, meet the new boss same as the old boss, but the whole privacy concern thing with streetview is a load utter and complete horse dung.
I am not even going to bother commenting on North Korea’s posturing at any length. If they do try and attack South Korea it will be a short lived exercise and there will be a united Korea once again. North Korea may have some big guns but if this happens, mark my words, it will be over before it really starts and they’ll be sorting out the pieces for years to come.
So that’s my little rant for today. It’s not coherent and it’s not important but all of these little things were starting to annoy me. I feel much better now…
24
May
Work is crazy right now. With work and family life and everything else I don’t have much free time. I at least two posts up my sleeve but they will percolate a little longer before seeing the light of day.
I am alive, mostly well, and no more insane than I ever was. Soon I will have more time I hope.
I was searching for cassette tape USB drives and ran across this: Cassette Tape Inspired Gadgets & Designs which contains some very cool “retro” designs such as:
and:
We all know I have an obsession with cassette tapes as evidenced by the Flash widget, Mixwidget, that I use for my mixes and have designed the Mixwidget Backend for. But I don’t think I have posted anything about my obsession ’round these parts in quite a while. I am an old-school blogger and about eight years ago I wrote a post that explains this weird obsession that I have. So instead of trying to explain it again I am just going to repost it because it still rings true.
Oh wait that’s right! A lot of you have never made a mix tape because you have all this technology. You can just throw some tracks together and burn off a cd. Like that takes any effort. It is actually almost an insult to those of us who spent countless hours putting tracks together, learning how to get rid of the pop between each song (you manually wind the tape back just a little bit), and actually having to wait for the song to fully play out for each track. This whole making a cd thing takes away from the actual effort of making a tape. You’ve have never had to set recording levels, equalize each song, or hand rewind a tape to record over the click from stopping the recorder. You have no understanding of the things of which I speak but I digress….
…watch the counter, you don’t want to run over and have to rewind the tape and listen to part of the song you just put on there, it ruins the flow.
Now for side two. Do you start a new mood or continue from side one? This is as important as the other pieces so think carefully. You are going to continue the mood and since you ended side one with a screaming love song from The Misfits you have to figure out where in the hell to go from there? That’s easy, just drop in The Anti-Heros – Jennifer since it’s a great track and you can follow it with a sappy but groovy love song or another offering from the punk genre.
So while each song is recording you think of what you will call this mix tape because he title of a mix tape is almost as important as the songs themselves. You can go for the cryptic title and be mysterious, or you can just use the old stand by and name it something she will get. I always went with the mysterious because I am sappy that way. It usually worked and if it didn’t I was probably wrong about the recipient anyway. You also have this folded up piece of stiff paper that most normal people would use to list the songs, but no not you, you need cover art! This is the perfect place to make a mini collage, but not too busy, it has to be subtle, and don’t forget to leave room for the title.
Now that the tape is done comes the really hard part. You have to actually give her the tape and it’s not easy. You don’t know her that well so just walking up to her is scary and these days might get you maced, you could give it to a mutual friend and hope it gets to her, or slip it into her locker and hope she listens to it. I was a pretty shy, if you can believe that, so I always went with option two or three because it gave me an opening for later “Hey did you like that mix I made for you?” But whatever you do after you make the tape is up to you. I can give you no more help. You are on your own.
That pretty much sums it up. I did update it a little bit since I know more about writing than I did when I first penned that piece but I have reposted it a couple of time over the years and it seemed like it was the right time to have on the site again. I hope you all enjoy my little rant and I hope I conveyed the romance I feel about the old-school press-to-record compilations. I know I dated myself horribly by posting this piece and I don’t give a rat’s ass. GET OFF MY LAWN AND PULL UP YOUR PANTS.
