miscellaneous uneditted thoughts

anyone reading this blog may have noticed that i am heavy handed when it comes to editing. reviewing my saved drafts from last week, i realize that i posted and then removed 2 entries and severely edited one of them down to contain only a "happy thought"! this edited, sanitized version of my ideas on spirituality is a far cry from my honest experience: my spiritual experience is not neat, usually does not make much sense, and is rarely cheery. i openly feel that it would not hold up to rational scrutiny, intellectual questioning, nor do i feel that i could do a very good job of communicating tangible reasons for why i believe what i believe.

lately though i have been experiencing more joy about spiritual things in my personal life, but that still does not change the questions i have about many things: suffering, the global class structure or the absence of God or the seeming absence of the mercy of God in these areas. i still don't know how to reconcile my faith the with existence of terrible suffering. Why doesn't God intervene? Where is God? Are we supposed to sort of fill God's role since God is not around? I don't really get it.

i like Benjamin's post that quoted a SPU professor talking about switching back and forth between calvinist and armenian views; on externalizing good things and internalizing bad things:

Jennifer, who is a sociology prof at SPU, and whose ideas I've found provocative in the past, said something interesting. She said that we want to be able to switchcalvinism and armenianism. Which is to say, we want all the autonomy and control which the armenian view gives us, but then when something really bad happens, all of a sudden we're all calvinistic and want to blame god for it. she gave as an example that her students will say things like "Well, God put me into this horrible marriage with this awful man". And she asks questions along the lines of--well, why are you all of a sudden so calvinistic about it? rapidly back and forth between

One thing I thing I have been thinking about lately, is how some of us can be the good in the world, and if we are Christians how we can be Christ in the world, how we can counter all the suffering and terribleness ourselves. Not in an arrogant "i have the truth" evangelistic sort of way, but in a normal, real way. I don't know if that makes sense or not. Actually let me deconstruct "be Christ in the world". What does that mean, anyway?

What I mean is helping people not from a place of feeling superior or from a place of feeling like we need to be "charitable", but being a positive force simply because it is the right thing to do. I know many times it is hard to know what "the right thing" to do is, and many times there isn't one "right thing"-- but whatever we do, we can be kind, loving, warm, good, and a counteracting agent against the pain and suffering in the world. Obviously people don't need to be Christians to do this. The last few weeks I have just been acutely aware of how I personally am still screwed up, unhealed, jaded, cynical, etcetera, and basically just a case, but what a miracle, God can still use me to help, comfort and be a support to others. At least that is what i currently choose to believe or perceive or interpret to be happening

That said I also want to reiterate my problem with having a comfortable bourgeois type faith where belief in God is easier for me now that I am personally suffering less and live in the Eden-like pacific northwest surrounded by rain forest and the lingering promise of forever being, at very least, middle class.