In the past few days I have checked my counter stats and realized that someone had sat and apparently read my entire blog, start to finish. Now, given the fact that my life is a little less than exciting, it would stand to reason that my blog would be boring. It is.
This weekend Amy and I cleaned the front yard. As my lawn mower is broken, I used the Weed Eater to mow. It looks like it was cut by a blind drunk man. Hehe. Our yard was getting pretty ugly from about a month's worth of neglect. The leaves needed raked. I guess my front yard trees have premature balding problems.
I've been really sidetracked from school work with all my extracurricular reading. I finished reading Matthew Gallatin, now I'm read St. Ignatius and the rest of the Apostolic Fathers. It's very interesting. Yesterday I had a conversation with the local First Baptist pastor, who happens to be the committee chair for Young Life locally. He told me that Baptists saw Acts as descriptive (a historical account), but not normative (for all places at all times). Now, this might not be true of all baptists, but for him anyway, it gives the authority to invent church. The problem for me is this: if the big problem of the Enlightenment and modernity was the invention of the self, then how are we doing better to go into varied forms of self-rule? Now we decide that we have the authority to establish the church any way we like it. This relates to the "personal worship preference" discussion. You see, I have many "personal theology preferences". I also have many "personal church polity preferences". The list could go on and on. From my personal perspective, the problem lies in allowing myself that sort of megalomania-control of my affairs. When I enter a situation/church/theological system my first thought is "do i agree with this, do I agree with that?" but this still maintains me at the very center of my own personal universe. This is highly problematic as a Christian, since Christ explicitly commanded his followers to lose their selves, deny their selves, die to self. How does that line up with a cult of personal preference? The short answer is, "it doesn't."
Talk about countercultural. Die to self. Give no regard to your own preferences. Think more of the other than yourself.
In our society this would be tantamount to treason against the reigning all-supreme self.
Now I have to read some more of Plato's Republic.
May God's richest blessings dwell on all of you and your families.