What Does it Mean to Live Intentionally?

I was looking through some old bubbs emails and came across this:

In thinking over this question[What does it mean to live intentionally], I was motivated to re-examine why I follow Christ. Now I'm not completely done with this yet (Both as for now and perpetually, as we should never stop examining why we follow Him), but for the sake of a great disscussion, I encourage you all to crack open our old Inkling texts to "The Weight of Glory", the "Practical Romance" of "Orthodoxy" and "Burnt Norton" from "The Four Quartets". But just to start us off, I think the reason we follow Christ and why it's not futile is because there is an undeniable desire for him that was built-in to us. It also has to do with the idea of a "Practical Romance" (I know, I know, it's that pesky term that we all spent two weeks banging our heads over) something that is at once familiar and comfortable yet exciting and ultimately fulfilling. Just some appetizers to chew on. As Lewis says, "Further Up and Further In!"

Hum....

The Marshmallow Test

A wonderfully hilarious illustration.

It's a famous psychology test...

What does this have to do with how successful a person becomes in life? (hint: there is a correlation)

Halfway through Martin Luther...

I feel pretty lost in a forest of terms, concepts, definitions, and ideas.

Let's begin with the main question. The fact is, people still sin after they become Christians. (And I define becoming a Christian as when a person accepts Christ as their personal savior from sin and death) How then do we reconcile sin with the fact that we have been saved? I admit that we are not saved by anything but faith in Christ's work, that is, there is not a single action I have done or can do in order to gain eternal life, but I don't understand the seeming contradiction which after-salvation sin places before me. (Even excepting faith in Christ which is itself an action which "God effects in us" pg. 23).

Let me try that again. If I find myself still sinning after I have confessed Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, does this mean that I am no longer saved? I know of some who get out of this by saying that once you're saved you're always saved, but that doesn't seem satisfactory because one has no objective way of knowing if one is saved. If good works are the concomitant effects of true faith in Christ, then does this mean that bad works (i.e. sin) are the concomitant effects of damnation?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, why all this continual purgation? Why can't God remove the possibility of sinning after I have willed to no longer sin?

I hope I haven't uttered anything heretical or blasphemous (though I'm afraid I probably have).

Help?

Under the Mercy,
Gabriel

Good Advice, but why?

This is a good piece of advice.

But why?

Why do we need to know where we come from in order to know where we are going?

"From whence have you come? Whither are you going?"

In other news, hard at work on Term Paper: Exciting!

A Paradox

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”

-William Blake

Go read those lines again.


done?

Now think them through a bit.

I've been seeing this idea pop up in alot of places. George Steiner first brought it to my attention in his book Errata by pointing out the paradox of language and the written word. There are limits to language in the sense that we use predetermined symbols which correspond to certain concepts or things or ideas, but within those limits, there is a Infinite Universe. Now I'd like to add a quick note here: there are several kinds or types of infinity. If you've ever read the Phantom Tollbooth, you'll remember this one passage where the main character is in either a tunnel or on a staircase(both maybe, I can't remember) and it's a monotonous infinity. Chesterton also mentions this when he talks about lunatics in Orthodoxy, the logic of the lunatic makes perfect sense, but it is a mad sense, a never ending circle, like a dog chasing its tail. Boethius also brings this theme up when he talks about the difference between eternity and mere immortality. The eternal is Presence itself, time only imitates the ever-presence of eternity in the Present. While immortality is merely a sucession of future turning into present which becomes past, eternity is a transcendent Present of all time. (There's ALOT more to be said on that subject, but that's for a term paper) Eliot's line about the "still point" the "intersection" (I'm getting sidetracked here, so I won't go and find the exact quote). What I hope all these examples have done is to give an idea of what I am not trying to describe. The sense of infinity I describe is not the monotonous infinity of a never ending corridor, but rather the infinity of possibility, an infinity rife and pulsing with creative potential. That is the sense in which language (confined as it is by representative symbols used to denote concepts) is infinite.

Another example of this paradox of infinite freedom within tangible confines can be seen in the production of a play (This is a variation on the theme of language). Ms. Card, in the context lecture I attended this evening, spoke of a certain set of restraints that a director is subject to (Which can be grouped into two main categories of Restraints of the text and Restraints of the community which produces the play), yet within these constraints, there is an infinity of variety which makes it possible to see something different every time the play is incarnated.

Once I got started, everything around me started to explode with this theme. Take Western Concert Music, twelve notes...A-B-C-D-E-F-G with their respective sharps and you can get anything! Palestrina, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, John Williams, Coldplay, name any genre! And that's just the beginning, you have different forms: the symphony, the sonata, theme and varaiation, the prelude, the etude, etc. There's a form, and there's endless possibility.

And what about Chemistry? There are only 92 naturally occuring elements on Earth and they form literally everything around us.

Architecture, Sculpting, Biology, Painting, Art, Humans (!) And this last one got me. Each created in the image of God, each an individual. Yet the more we become Christ-like, the more we truly become ourselves. Tolstoy may have been right in saying all happy families are alike, but I think it would be more accurate to say that all happy families are alike in the potentiality for Joy.

Which brings me to The Great Divorce by Lewis. The grey town of the opening stretches to infinity in all directions, but it is so numbingly same. The real shocker is when you find out that all of hell cannot even affect a butterfly of heaven. (Note: As Lewis himself says, the illustrations of The Great Divorce are not meant to be literal ideas about the respective places, just as Dante's Comedy aren't meant to be factual descriptions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven).

If you take anything away from this ramble, take this:

Heaven can never be exhausted. Whatever else it is, it can and could never be merely infinite. All these examples I've listed so far are but the muddy trickles from the Fountain. How great our joy and wonder when we come to the Source?

It is the Good which is really interesting and evil which bores the hell out of a person (or rather, into him).

The sculpture which took an artist a month of 8-hour-a-day carving to complete can be destroyed in 2 minutes.

So there you have it, my long long and still incomplete ramble on the paradox of limits and freedom.

It is through law that we become truly free.

Let's discuss!

A Few Questions

...That have been on my mind for a few months now:

Most of us don't reach perfection by the time we leave this life. At the end, most of us still have some (or many) rough spots, even if we have been saved and granted eternal life through faith in Christ. Now the whole doctrine of sin seems to be based upon the idea that the way things are right now are not the way things should be. Sin is an accident. And because of that sin, we are condemned to eternal death (we'll get into Eschatology in a bit). The Incarnation somehow (and this will probably be my presentation topic, oh Athanasius! You are very wonderful, checkity.) restores us back to a right relation with God. Now whatever else Jesus does in us and for us, I think it is safe to assume that we'll be free from sin. So this is my question(s):

Even if we are saved, we are still imperfect and sinful at the end of our lives. After death, are we automatically restored to perfection and holiness? And if we are, why the agony of this life if God could perfect us instantly? Why don't we go straight to Heaven after we accept the Gospel as true and binding to our lives?

Could this be the justification behind a purgatory? From what I know, the main objection against purgatory came when wicked men decided to play with hell fire and sell indulgences. Obviously, you can't buy salvation or purification (see the Simoniacs).

So to really, really get to the question:

If we are meant to eventually come into the presence of God which will destroy anything sinful, what happens to most of us who die saved but still ravaged/harrased by sin? How are our imperfect natures developed into being able to bear the presence of the Holy God after death?

I want to lean towards purgatory, but I'm confronted with quite a strong protestant reaction against this. Any Eschatological insights out there? Help?

Secondly, Shakespeare is amazing and Twelfth Night brings up some absolutely amazing questions:

How does love conceal and/or reveal identities?

yeah.

Another thing that's been on my mind: Is Love a sub category of Goodness or is Goodness subordinate to Love? And what about Beauty and Truth, I'm not entirely convinced that they categories of Goodness, otherwise, why not just have Goodness? Medival Numerology perhaps?

Lastly, How do we Love rightly? What is Love?

I'd be happy to talk about this...

Facebook

Open Question:

Should a (me) person who has a known tendency to become slightly addicted (3-5 hrs. a day) to online personal networks such as MySpace join Facebook?

This comes after about 2 years of 'abstinence' haha.

Motivations:
Friends. Summer's here, I don't see them that much. (Although Wheatstone is coming up)

Pros: Well, I'll get to 'connect' with a whole slew of people and at least stay slightly more in touch with them. Friends are good.

Cons: Eats away huge amounts of time. Especially since I have this tendency to become addicted to this stuff. There are better things to do with ones time.

Ahhhh! I don't know! Probably not though.

What do you guys think?

Just Some Questions...

What does it mean to "know thyself"?

And why is it so important?

What does Righteousness by Faith mean?

How can one Man/God take away the sins of the world?

Why is God Love?

What is Love?

How did Enoch "walk with God"?

What does it mean to seek God's face?

How do we "see" God?

On almost finishing Part II of Anna K

Some questions:

MKR: "In regards to Anna K the lady herself, can you separate her from her sin? Is there a point where Anna and her choices determine who she is?"

Um, hmmm. That's hard. I'm pretty sure that the choices we make have either negative or positive effects upon our soul. Either bringing us closer to Heaven or Hell, but although I want to say that eventually her sin defines her, my own experience does not seem to corroborate this.
For example, (As C.S. Lewis puts it) there has always been one person with whom we seperate the sin from the sinner. Namely, ourselves. When we sin, do we identify ourselves with our sin? No! Dengenerate as we are, we still abhor our own sin and feel shame and hope furiously to be able to overcome it. (Thank God that we have been saved through Christ!) We sin, but it feels so very alien to us.
Now in the case of Lady Anna, she also feels this horror and shame at her sin, but it seems to me that she doesn't wish to repent either. When she looks at her husband during her affair with Vronsky, it's almost as if she wants to find faults in him so as to justify herself. Tolstoy is so good! With each further step away from grace, we feel are hearts wrenched at such beauty (Lady Anna) perverting itself (Vronsky...did I mention how much I dislike him?). So in sum, I don't know yet if there is a point where Lady Anna's sin becomes her...I'll just have to finish the book then. =]

Blarney: "how much sin does it take before one cannot be separated from their sins? Is there a "Point of No Return" in regards to sin/sinning?"

Thank you for the vote, but I think MK would probably be a better candidate, =] It is her favorite!

As to the question, I would think that there is always a chance for redemption as long as there is life. The only "unforgivable sin" would be to reject the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I'm still debating whether Anna has crossed this line yet. She actually begins to loath her husband. At this point it seems that only the love she has for her son can save her.

Me:
Why does Stiva feel no shame in Adultery except when he's caught when Anna is tortured by it?

Why is society so lenient towards him?

How could Anna fall for such a horribly wicked person like Vronsky?

How did Tolstoy become so good at writing? (Especially when he compares Adultery to Murder, Oh my Goodness! Soooooo Good.)

When can the story get back to Levin??!!!!


And me is really really really terribly sorry for sort of kind of um.... findingoutwhathappenedattheendofstory. Ahhhh!!! Don't hurt me...

Musical Traditionalism?

I'm sure she didn't intend to answer my question, but she inadvertently gave me more materially to work off of. My friend Blip is to see Alfred Brendel perform live soon! (Now I'm not familiar with Alfred Brendel, but he's a concert pianist, that's all I know!) Anyways, here's a quote from him that is a counter to the performer being the interpreter.

"If I belong to a tradition it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece twll the performer what he should do and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed."
-Alfred Brendel

So obviously I'm wrong about all pianists holding to the theory of Musical Relativism...

But the question remains, how should music be performed?

Musical Relativism?

Halfway through the required Hermeneutics Lecture Series by Dr. Walt Russell (I only fell asleep twice so far!...slightly better than last year...) I got an idea for a question.

In his lecture, Dr. Russell points out the relativistic/existencial view that has taken hold of our culture and society in the late 20th Century. This view causes us to view the individual (i.e. Me) as the sole point of reference. In extremeist form, radical relativism pretty much says that everything is only interpreted by the individual. As applied to Hermeneutics, our culture sort of brainwashes us into thinking that our interpretation of scripture is what matters. The emphasise becomes what I think of God and not what God thinks of me.

Another background info is the series of posts upon Beauty that Dr. Reynolds has been posting. The first article of the series is here:

http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2008/01/18/what-my-nana-taught-me-beauty-matters/

Basically, he in article IV he argues for the existence of beauty based on experiences that illicit unanimous, universal responses from any normal person.

Okay, so I was playing Bach and then it hit me. Is Music relative? At least in my experience, I have found Music, especially Rachmaninoff's, to be extremely Beautiful. So if things Beautiful are objectively beautiful, then what about interpretation of music?

In my limited musical experience, I've discovered that alot of weight is placed on personal interpretation of a piece of music. Yet, I find this hard to reconcile with Dr. Russell's argument in favor of putting the most emphasis on Authorial intent. Meaning that what the author is trying to convey is actually the most important thing (which I agree with).

If I were to apply the same train of reasoning to a piece of music, then the intention of the composer should be the most important thing. (???)

Yet so much emphasis is placed on personal interpretation of music. Now a point to note hear would be that interpretation is different from playing it well. Anyone can play the notes, but to express it well, takes it another step and is (so I am told) what defines a musician. The personal expression of music.

This whole question has also been fueled by a series of lectures I'm listening to on Classical Music. In ancient Greece, the concept of music was that it was a sonic manifestation of the order of the universe and that it was a way in which the individual could express himself. Their concept of music was humanistic (sorry my terms are so jumbled!). In the Medieval times, this view of music changed to one in which music was a supplement to the Church. Views of Music went through some more changes and then cycled back to now where we generally hold to the Grecian view of music. (I think).

So what I'm trying to ask is this: Is the emphasis placed on personal intepretation of Music a result of cultural influences or is it a result of the inherent Beauty of a Composer's music melding with the intentions of a performer? Is the emphasis we place on personal interpretation a good thing?

AHHHHHH!!!! =]

Found in a newspaper ad: Question, seeking True Answer

As this blog is entitled "Curiously Curious" Here goes:

Is it a sin to fall asleep during a sermon?
(See previous post)

Joe thinks cats are people, John thinks their not. As a Hobbesian, how would one resolve their conflict? (You are not allowed to envoke the authority of the Sovereign)

What does it mean to live intentionally?

What does it mean to be accomplished?

Am I living to my full potential?

Why am I jealous of others?

Why am I so lazy?

Why am I so un-motivated?

Why is life so meaningless without God?

Why do I seem to forget the previous question so often?

Why can't I get up earlier?

How can I become better than I am?

Why does God love us?

Is THI worth going to (instead of other schools)?

Am I going to do well on my SAT and PSAT?

Will I ever read this post in the far off future?

If the cat got killed by curiousity, what killed the dog?

Why is music so beautiful?

Why is learning and growing so wonderful?

Why is God so good?

Just some things I'm thinking about.....