token bad girl, at your service (not in that way, you perv)
I haven’t felt much like writing this week because I’ve been in an awful mood. It’s been hard on me, but probably harder on the people who live with me. I’ve taken some steps to rectify the situation but I’m a bit slow coming out of it.
So, the question is: is it better to make a whiny blog post or to post not at all? We’ll see. Also, please make sure to turn your sarcasm-decoders on, you’ll need them later.
I’m kinda getting tired of being the only non-evangelical/non-conventional person in my small group. Well, I’m not the only one, as Brother Mark is there to back me up, but he’s been skipping a bit lately and I can’t blame him, because it’s been dreadful. We’re plowing through the rest of Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle, which even the mainline kids haven’t liked, and on which I’m still planning on making an entry explaining why we’ve found it to be so obnoxious.
We’re going through the final four lessons in two weeks so we can move on to — drumroll please — Blue Like Jazz! For those of you not familiar with the latest in Christian non-fiction, Blue Like Jazz (subtitled: “Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” To which I say: quit trying to squirm out of the “religious” label, dude. No one’s buying it, nor should they) is a book by Donald Miller that Christian parents give to their wayward children in order to draw them back into the fold. OK, not really, but that’s why I ended up reading it. In our group, the only ones who have read it are Brother Mark and I, as well as Heather, the other resident Bad Kid (less religious than me and far less loud-mouthed).
Blue Like Jazz is not a particularly radical book. In fact, it’s pretty much entirely too conservative for me, making it perfect for the group. Miller’s about a more tolerant evangelicalism, which is better than the other kind. I like to think that Blue Like Jazz is a gateway book, i.e. a book that could possibly lead people to reading other books that would really change the way they think.
That said, I haven’t read the book in quite some time and would like to read it again in light of all that I’ve learned since the first reading.
Anyway, I’m starting to kind of feel like the token rabblerouser in the small group — the person who provides a different viewpoint, the presence of which allows the other group members to believe they’re not as insulated and dogmatic as they think. That’s a pretty harsh statement and I probably shouldn’t make it on the internet, but like I said, the bad mood hasn’t completely evaporated so I’m still really bitchy and I’m not really feeling like toning it down right now.
Over the past month I’ve been experiencing a good deal of study-induced euphoria, reading all kinds of great theology and other work by really smart, thoughtful people, and having good conversations with people as well. But recently I’ve been feeling far more pessimistic, especially when it comes to the Bible. It’s not that I’m so stereotypically pomo that I don’t believe in truth (or, Truth), but it’s that it seems to be buried under so many layers of culture, tradition and perception so as to be almost unknowable. The way any given person reads the Bible is so completely dependent on that person’s own paradigm and assumptions about the world and the way it works. Not just the world, either, but the nature of Jesus and his message.
While I tend to be of the belief that God exists independent of our acknowledgement, knowledge, or understanding of God, based on what I’ve seen and experienced, I also believe that we create God. Not necessarily in our own image (though we do that plenty), but in the image we want. I want God to be merciful and kind, so that’s what God is. I want God to intervene in my life, to heal illness, to cure the incurable disease, so God by God’s nature does those things. I want God to mete out justice on the evil (i.e. homosexuals, duh), so that’s also what God does. I want God to be a giver of ponies and maker of sparkles and rainbows. (But not the gay kind, they’re evil.)
Like I said, I’m pretty pessimistic these days about humans ever being able to really understand the truth about anything because we’re so busy creating what we think the truth should be.