Owl's Song

has an awesome post on the nature of marriage this morning.

Marriage is, by its nature, two people in a relationship. TWO people. One cannot carry the burden for both, no matter how much they want the marriage to succeed. We cannot love enough, lead enough, or submit enough to make it happen.

I love it!

Father

For me, there is a certain amount of trust in the word father. This isn't to say that my dad has never let me down or broken a promise. But (to my knowledge) it's never been through anything more selfish than absent-mindedness. And I can't complain too much about that, since I'm rather heavily burdened with it myself!

I know that if I ever had serious problems, my dad would do what he could to help me out. No matter what.

It wouldn't necessarily mean bailing me out. But he'd try to help me pull through.

I love my dad. Sometimes he gets down on himself, and I don't like that. He's smart, but sometimes he has trouble expressing precisely what he means, and from his comments from time to time I get the idea that he doesn't think he's smart. (Mom and I are both pretty verbal!)

He's also really easy-going most of the time. "Passive" tends to have a negative connotation; maybe "patient" would be a better term for it. On the other hand, he doesn't like waiting! (Though, in fairness, who does?!) But my point is that his way of showing love is much more quiet than my mom's. She's very active. He just - is.

Sometimes he gets grumpy, and he can be a bit of a bear! He gets frustrated when things don't go the way he wanted them to, and especially when he feels like he's being interrupted or actively ignored.

When I think about my attitude toward my dad, I can see that my attitude toward God parallels it in a lot of ways. I don't go to God a lot in prayer. We don't chat. But I try to keep an ear to the ground. If things don't go as I planned, I try to think about why. Is it just an awkward situation, or is it God's guidance?

Likewise, I've lost my tension about doctrine and believing the right thing. I don't understand how or why salvation works; I just trust that it does. I'm more concerned about modeling "Be Kind No Matter What" for my students. I figure that God knows what to do and can take care of things. I'm okay with that. If I've got a particular part to play, God'll let me know. (And if I don't get the message the first time, I expect He'll just be a bit louder the next.)

I love my dad.

God

Okay, so no picture. I mean, God isn't a starry sky or an old man, which is what I mostly get from googling for an image.

Well, anyway, I find it interesting that when lay Christians talk about God, they typically mean God the Father. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are just kind of... also God. But God the Father is the "real" God. Almost like he's the boss and they're the underlings.

I think the Apostle's Creed is a major cause of this. The divinity of two-thirds of the triune God is not stated in the creed. And while I think a lot of Christians don't know the creed by heart, I also think it's kind of "gone underground" and is a part of our cultural psyche. The Apostle's Creed illustrates the way we think about God on a subconscious level.

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Also? Capitalizing the "g" in "God" is important. Some people say we oughta capitalize all pronouns that refer to one of the persons of the Trinity (oo! There's another one!) but I'm not all that careful about it.

We use the capital letter to show that "God" is a name, not just a word; by changing a word into a name, we make the word itself special and restrict its use. No longer can it be one among many. It personalizes it. Our dog's nickname is Puppy (never mind that he's, like, ten). Making the word "puppy" into a name means he is OUR puppy - and the only one.

I still feel awkward calling my in-laws "Mom" and "Dad". There are many moms and dads in the world, but that's how I refer to my parents; those words have taken on a special significance since I use them as names.

Believe

I love this image, because I think it illustrates what so many people today do believe: that we can't believe anything - not really. We are hyper-aware of the limitations of our perception, most of us because we have more than once believed in a lie and later found out how foolish we were.

For a Christian, though, belief is more than just mental acceptance of a principle. Belief guides action (or it should). Now in some cases, it doesn't have to. For example, in my life, it really doesn't matter whether or I believe Earth is flat or round. It doesn't affect what I do or how I interact with others.

But a belief like "all humans have value to God" does - or should - affect the way I live. If every person has value to God, how should that affect the way I treat them? The way I think of them? Is it right of me to say nasty things about someone who cut me off in traffic? or about a political candidate? or, well, anyone, for that matter?

Even in fiction, we are encouraged to see the value of human life as relative. I mean, everybody knows you can't shoot James Bond and expect to get away with it, right? Good guys struggle through challenges and get the girl. Bad guys laugh at the suffering of others, give expository monologues, and perish in interesting ways.

Sometimes I think the stories we tell affect the way we view our lives. Or, maybe, it's the other way around; we tell stories in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys" because we already have a tendency to see things in terms of "us" and "them." Either way, I don't think that's God's perspective on the matter.

As Walter Donovan says to Indy (just after shooting James Bond Henry Jones), "It's time to ask yourself - what do you believe?"

We need to ask ourselves the same thing. And we need to follow that question with another: do our actions prove that we believe what we say we believe?

Images thanks to http://www.luxor.com/entertainment/entertainment_believe.aspx and http://jpsgranville100favefilms.blogspot.com/2008/05/indiana-jones-and-last-crusade-1989.html

The Is (eyes? ayes?) Have It

I always find creeds, like the Apostles' Creed, the Pledge to the American Flag, the various scouting mottos ("and to OBEY the LAW of the PACK!" hee!) and other created statements of belief to be intriguing.

You see, so often, we say them together. In unison. They are a statement of corporate belief. They list what we believe.

And yet, without any excpetions that I know of (although I'm sure there are some), they start off with "I."

Why is this, I wonder? I'd like to think that it's a way of showing respect for the individual. After all, we're choosing to subsume that individuality and coalesce with a group just by reciting the group's creed.

As individuals, we're affirming our personal choice to be a member of that group.

So while as a church we believe the statements of the Apostles' Creed, that in and of itself is not enough. Each of us must make that choice on our own. Each of us bears the responsibiltiy for that choice.

What will your choice be?

I -

I believe!

Image thanks to http://flickr.com/photos/35744138@N00/925335248/

Apostles Creed Wiki

So I've been inspired by a post over at McKinney Methodist, in which Matt linked each of the significant words to its entry in Wikipedia.

However, when I saw the post, I first thought that each link led to another blogpost about that word and what it means from a Christian perspective - specifically, that blogger's reflections on the word.

So, since it looks like it hasn't been done, I'm going to try to do it.

If nothing else, at least I can't say I've got nothing to blog about! XD

Image thanks to http://blog.mrm.org/2007/09/abominable-creed/

Going to church

First of all, please don't think I'm smarting off or being glib about this. It's something I've struggled with for awhile.

My husband and I haven't been to church for most of the summer. Today we went for Sunday School, but we didn't stay for corporate worship. And I'm pretty conflicted about it. I feel like the reasons I have both for wanting to go and wanting NOT to go are weak, and if you push those weak reasons aside, I'm not sure what's left.

Reasons to go:
- People expect it (especially here in the South)
- To humor the pastor (we like him, and he did make a point of inviting us personally today)
- Scripture expects it (we're not sure on this one)

Reasons not to go:
- We gain nothing (as far as I can tell - no learning, no fellowship, no strength)
- Our presence there benefits no one (beyond them being glad we're there because we're supposed to be!)
- I feel like I'm facilitating bad habits. Is this worship? Are you kidding me?? We come because we're supposed to or because we're used to it. We sit in the seats we're used to. We sing the songs we're told to. We listen attentively to the choir's anthem, but we don't clap because it's not a performance (though if it's not, I'm not sure what it is). We listen to a message that the pastor has worked so hard on, but because of the way the gathering is structured, we can't participate or respond beyond shaking his hand on the way out and saying "nice sermon, Pastor," and so it's SO EASY to let our minds wander...

Please, God, save us from ourselves. (I really didn't intend to rant. Yikes.)

And this is a church we LIKE! Our pastor is awesome. The people are so kind. I love the Methodist hymns (though some of the newer ones feel... weird). I even love our follow-along-in-the-book things. (What are those called?) In fact, possibly the reason I feel so conflicted is that I really believe the promise I made to support the local congregation (although I didn't make the promise at this church and I haven't yet transferred my membership, this has become our local congregation, just not officlaly) with my prayers, my presence, my gifts, and my service.

I want to want to go. The times we've stayed for corporate worship, it's felt like wasted time - not harmful to us, perhaps, but not the best use of our resources. And I'm not sure what to do. I know that church can be more than this. But I'm not sure what I can do to help at this church. On the other hand, we've really connected with some of these people, and I don't want to just leave them behind and go looking somewhere else.

I just don't know what to do.

Image thanks to http://www.saintmarymagdalene.org.uk/