Sometimes we find God in the most unexpected places. I think I've not found him because I've been looking in the wrong places. Or I've been expecting him to look a certain way. But the second I dropped those preconceptions...bam...he's right there. This is really vague. But it's still really vague for me too. This is the best that I can do right now.
In other news...I've gotta give a big shout out to lala. Here's how it works.
1. Sign up for a free account.
2. Listen to full albums or one song or mulitple songs at a time all the way through for free, but only one time.
3. Put 50 free songs into your personal queue to listen to as much as you...for FREE.
4. After the 50 you pay $0.10 per song to listen to them as much as you want. Or just listen to them once for free.
Since it's like an email account you can go to any computer and log in and listen to your stuff. There's also a lot of networking you can do on there. But I've got facebook for that.
That's awesome. Thank you internet. You are too cool.
5 comments:
i'm glad you've found God in unexpected places. I hope that our talk helped (not hurt) last night.
YOU ARE LOVED <3
good post, scott. and good call on lala. thanks for the heads up... i'm gonna like it!
scott,
to build on what we were talking about via chat the other night, because i’ve been thinking about it (and forgive me if your period of questioning has ended), and my thought is that the process of examining and questioning needs to be given the same respect as an answer. you see? the glaring flaw i saw in, say, francis schaeffer, is that he billed his book as deconstructing his faith and coming to the same answer, when it really doesn’t take all that. because he didn’t completely deconstruct his faith.
faith implies belief. belief is necessary for faith. you have to fundamentally BELIEVE in jesus’ identity and sacrifice with regard to christianity. my qualms are with CERTAINTY, which gets people into trouble.
we act on our certainties. scientific progress is built upon empirically-proven certainties. so it would be safe to say that accepted progress is the result of the accretion of certainties. the car will drive this speed with this amount of gasoline going into the engine, in these road conditions. the metal used in making the car has a tolerance and we know the engine will not explode. obviously there are flaws and anomalies, but the overwhelming experience is otherwise. this medical test will detect this ailment in this percentage of people, etc.
god cannot be quantified. everyone is in this together – none of us have SEEN god, or witnessed him doing something. when someone says they have seen god, what they are saying is that their subjective perception has identified some perceived phenomenon as “god”. this is not to be clinical about it, but god is not a certainty. by its nature, god CANNOT be a certainty.
so back to the idea that progress is made as the result of accumulated certainties. i think this notion has to be broken, because INDIVIDUAL progress is equally unable to be quantified. do you see what i’m saying? certainty narrows a range, kind of by its definition. if your actualization as a human being is dependent on feeling certain of an afterlife, you will then live in a very narrow range of experience. of comfort.
what i find most exhilarating about being alive is quite the opposite, actually. remember what i said about the parable of the men with their foundations built on different materials? a house on the sand. how marvelous is that? the waves, the erosion, everything is conspiring to drag it to sea. but why is that bad?
when you are reduced to your human impulses, you will find some interesting results. humans are curious and self-aware and finite, so the most basic of preoccupations is the problem of death. but i would argue that death is NOT a problem. death is a very natural part of our lives. we see it every day, in some way. things end all the time. the troubling thing about death is the very real concept of non-existence. it’s so troubling, that even in the face of death – you sit there and eat a burger for lunch – you are only experiencing that painful quality of it as it pertains to you, and that’s self-absorption.
there’s a very selfish truth in the center of all this. you want your life to mean something, but what is “meaning something”? does that need to imply immortality? no. i don’t think it does. because it’s like i was saying. you are experiencing the present. the past only exists in human consciousness as the present. the future will be experienced the same way. i mean, it’s been said that future and past don’t exist in the absence of human perception. it’s a way of dealing with the linearity.
a scientist discovers a new strain of some incurable virus. don’t you think there’s a sense of wonder in that discovery? how the virus functions. wrapping the mind around a new concept. don’t you think that’s progress? it’s discovery. it’s gorgeous in its complexity. obviously you want to figure out a cure for something that’s plaguing humanity, but there IS a sense of respect, of wonder, at coming across something completely NEW.
a virus is a problem, in other words. god is not a problem. god is a source of wonder, if it exists. but unexplainable phenomena are just that: unexplainable. god IS individual, because each person will define “god” differently. develop your sense of wonder, and try to live in the idea that “progress” doesn’t require answers. you don’t NEED answers. being alive, being present, being aware – these things are all LIFE. it’s just a constant, protracted series of encounters. you don’t have to rush to make sense of it. just learn to find sanctuary in NOT making sense of it. which is not to say you’ll never encounter the numinous: you just give that its due – a knowing wink at anomalies, in a sense – and keep moving. you’re in a different moment as you’re coming to contemplate that thought itself.
it’s about appreciating. it’s about wonder. it’s about your head ringing.
Wow...I go to check my email in the morning before the gym and all of a sudden I have to process a lot of information. But well thought out information that deserves some kind of a response. So here goes...
I understand what you are saying...I think. But I want to address your statement about wanting answers. I agree and disagree about wanting to find answers. For you, you may have been able to pull away from wanting to find the answers. Well...for me...and maybe this is semantics...but I don't look at searching for what I really believe as looking for answers. I FEEL that God is love, God is looking for a personal connection with me, and that there is grace to be found in that experience. So I have these "needs" or "ideas" in me of what God is. The way that I was looking at him before put him in a box that did not fit how I felt about Him. But I couldn't get away from these views until it was pointed out to me that I was even doing it. Now, I'll admit that could possibly be because I was raised in a Christian home, by Christian parents. But, for me, it's there. So I'm looking to have those needs fulfilled. I don't want to get into the really deep methods I've taken up on my blog, as a way of searching for this "experience". But I will say that after talking to you, then Jess and another friend I was shown something that was a big disconnect in the way I was approaching trying to see God. It was something that I probably would have never noticed. But once I side stepped this problem...I had complete peace about the idea of who God was. I haven't felt like this about God...maybe...ever?
So no...I'm definitely not done with my questions. I haven't found a comfortable "god" easy chair in which to rest for the rest of my life. But I've changed my perspective to allow me to enjoy the journey. To allow me to not have to figure it out all at once. For me, I feel that it's allowed me to experience God in ways I wouldn't have been able to before. I know it's vague. If you want specifics then you'll have to email me. But I have peace about my journey of spiritual "becoming" now. And right now I'm grateful for that.
use one of your songs to get "i saw God today"... he appears in the most remarkable places, when we are looking and realise he is there.
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