armageddon?

If you know me, you know that I have a weird, irrational phobia of ketchup. Yes. Ketchup. Clearly, I have issues. And imagine my horror when I saw these.

Ketchup-flavored potato snacks. What is wrong with the universe? Have we all gone crazy?

And speaking of the universe going crazy .... have you heard about this detestable fashion craze making a comeback?

Is this Armageddon? Can there really be any other explanation for ketchup-flavored snacks and the return of sports-team-themed, animal-printed sweats?

Perhaps we should all sign up for Rapture Letters? Just to be on the safe side.

words

Here's what I think is interesting. I've been thinking about hot-button words. Ugly words that no one wants to claim.

Fundamentalist means hyper-judgemental. Or overbearing. It has become a word about character or personality or manner. But that's not really what fundamentalist means. Fundamentalism is about the belief itself. Not necessarily the manner in which those beliefs are lived. Wikipedia says:

Fundamentalism, in religion refers to a belief in the infallibility, and literal interpretation, of a doctrine or holy book.

I never thought I was a fundamentalist. I wasn't legalistic in the way I lived out my faith. I never thought Pat Roberston, or John McArthur or John Piper spoke for me. But I would have told you the bible was divine, infallible and (until pretty recently) meant to be taken literally. So I think I kind of was. It doesn't mean I was a judgmental ass or anything (well, perhaps I was/am, but not for that specific reason anyway), it just means I believed certain things.

I think when people say sometimes "I'm not a fundamentalist" they mean to say really "I'm not a judgemental ass" which is all well and good. Probably that is true. But it doesn't mean that their beliefs are not fundamentalist by nature.

Indoctrinate is another loaded word. We tend to associate it with a kind of aggressive, ram-down-your-throat manner of teaching. It's not. We can indoctrinate people with kind, gentle words and in the most loving manner. And I think, more often than not, we do.

But indoctrinate is more about the goal of instruction (Webster says to "imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle") not the manner with which we instruct.

No one thinks they are a fundamentalist (okay, maybe a few people do). No one wants to believe they are indoctrinating their children. For me, those are never words I would have claimed. But for a long time, in the sense of what my beliefs were and how I raised my kids, they really were accurate descriptions.

What's my point? I don't know exactly. It's just something that has struck me lately.

Note: To some extent I can't imagine how you can raise your kids without indoctrinating them. I feel strongly about raising my kids to be critical thinkers. However, that doesn't mean (either on purpose or unwittingly) that my kids aren't indoctrinated. Parenting by nature means imposing some of our thoughts and opinions on our kids. I have to laugh when I hear people say that they were not indoctrinated by their parents as children. Yes they were. Of course they were. (Even if the beliefs didn't stick.)

tired

I am the worst blogger ever lately.

Here's the truth. I'm kind by exhausted by the whole faith crisis thing. I'm sick of thinking about it. It makes my brain hurt. It makes my soul tired.

And if I am honest, I'm a little spooked. Because the more I think about it ... the more I look at things critically ... the less I seem to believe anything I once believed. And so I think I'm scared. Because I'm afraid if I think too much about it, the final, fragile shreds of faith I have left will completely dissipate ... until there's nothing more of it. And then what?

So I'm ignoring it all. Trying my very best not to think about any of it. Ahhh. Sweet repression.

reading

My second grader has to do at least ten minutes of reading for school every night. If he averages this amount of time at the end of the month, in return he gets a coupon for free kids' meal at Culver's. Not bad, huh?

Well, I have no promises of fast food to entice you, but here are some suggestions for good reading in case you are interested.

Greg Boyd is starting a series on his blog about violence and genocide in the Old Testament. Looks like good stuff!! Boyd is one of the few apologists that doesn't make me want to bang my head on a brick wall, so I'm super excited to read his thoughts on this subject.

Also, Doug Pagitt rolled out his new web site and has posted excerpts of his new book, A Christianity Worth Believing In. I had the opportunity to read the book ... it is awesome and gives me hope. Some people think Pagitt is amazing. The rest probably think he is a hell-bound heretic. I happen to fall into the former category. But regardless of where you fall, he certainly makes for interesting reading.

miracles

When I was little, I thought Mount Rushmore was a miraculous occurrence. Literally. I truly believed that those four famous faces were divinely carved into the side of the mountain by the hand of God.

No one told me they were. I just somehow got the idea in my head, and it stuck. And since I was raised and schooled Catholic, it didn't seem far off from all the other things I believed. I guess when you're immersed in the stuff of Rea Sea partings, walking on water and resurrections after death, presidents on mountains don't really seem all that amazing.

The funny (and somewhat embarrassing) thing is, I think I was pretty old before I realized that my Mount Rushmore assumptions were slightly off. Seriously, I think I was like ten or twelve years old. I wasn't crushed by the realization or anything. It was just more like, "oh, yeah. I suppose that doesn't really make sense." It never occured to me to rethink my assumptions. Once I did though, it seemed pretty obvious.

In the same vein, it was only recently, in my thirties (ugh, that phrase never fails to bum me out a bit), that it ever occurred to me to look at things like the the bible and its miracles critically.

I had spent my childhood believing in God and my adult life as a pretty serious Christian. But somehow I had never stopped to consider the very basic, fundamental question why do I believe the Bible is true?

Stepping back, that strikes me as so very odd. How could I have never, up until now, asked those questions? They are kind of important questions ... no? How could I have based my life on a faith ... and much of my faith on a book ... and NEVER have bothered to discern whether that book was true, or why I believed it was? It almost borders on ludicrous when I think about it in those terms.

And when I think of it in the specifics, I am even more amazed. I could have told you that the gospel writers wrote years and years after the death of Jesus. But somehow it never struck me as odd (until recently) that they wrote (as history, fact and eyewitness account) about the miraculous events that surrounded even the birth of Jesus. Even the inner most thoughts and feelings of the mother of Jesus. How the heck did they presume to know (as an eyewitness no less) what Mary "pondered in her heart?" Or what she was thinking when an angel descended down to interrupt her day? Why did I never wonder?

And it wasn't until recently that I realized that stories of deities with virgin births, miraculous signs and resurrections from the dead are vast and numerous. And that quite a few of those stories (with many, many parallels to the Jesus story) predated Jesus by quite some time. How could I not know this? Doesn't this seem like kind of an important piece of information?

I'm certainly no genius, but I'm a fairly educated person. I've done my share of bible studies. Taken my share of philosophy and theology courses. Read a few books over the years. But there were these gigantic pieces of information that I never even explored .... and these very basic questions that I never even considered.

I take responsibility for my ignorance. But I also think in so many ways Christianity encourages a kind of blind faith. Not overtly, but in subtle ways. It certainly doesn't encourage questioning and exploring ... at least not in my experience.

I don't know where I'm going with this exactly. It just has been striking me lately how easy it is to isolate yourself. To never really consider the facts at hand. To have a blind faith .... even when you have no intention whatsoever of doing that. I always felt pretty informed. I never would have said that my faith was blind ... but in so many ways it was.