Essays - part two

Well, here is the first "appendix" to the original letter I wrote to my dad. This bit deals with the importance of the church and its role in the dialogue of scripture.

I think we need to give the church - even the church as we often criticize it - a more careful look.

read here.

Essays Against Essays - part one

Recently, some very interesting and almost heated discussions with my dad have left me vigorously giving into the temptation to explore the philosophical and theological implications of a lot of the ideas I have heard and developed over the last few years.
I wrote him a long letter outlining, more completely than I ever have, some of the things I consider to be intrinsic to life in Christ and, generally, as human beings.

I have gone back and tweaked the letter, filled in a few small holes and posted it on this blog in the hope that some of you will take a look and comment on the validity of what I am saying and even of the fact that I am saying it in this way.
This is the initial mini-thesis. There are a few subsequent "appendices" to follow. None of the ideas are necessarily original, but I do not quote anyone because I have arrived at the conclusions on my own.
I have left all in the original letter form.

Take a look.

Our Chimney (Our Emasculated House)

"Mum tore the chimney off our house. It had been steely, erect, unsinkable in the tile-waves, locks of heat crimping its sides every Christmas after we lit the fire to pretend it was winter while Mum blanched in her memories and we sweated silently over unopened gifts. Smoggy curls, almost bad breath, snaked from its nostrils on Sundays when her swampy sighs extinguished us all, and rolling black smoke, freckled with sparks, spumed heavenward when we made the fire too big and sprinkled on secret handfuls of flour – like little witch doctors repulsing disease. But it’s just a hole now" -cml.

Scientologically

Why is it that we have been so ready to allow science a special province over truth - over reality in general?

Science is little more than a practically minded (useful and interesting) subset of philosophy. Why has it become, unequivocally, the measure of "what is real" and "why things happen" or even "whether things happened"? "It has been scientifcally proven that..." is now a formula for truth.

And it's probably one of the most feeble suppositional bases on which to stand.

We have forced ourselves into a tiny box and it doesn't let in much light.

Fiction

"fiction irrefutably proves what science cannot, roundly explains what philosophy stammers at, renders the deepest mysteries of theology as obvious as day and then shatters it all at the last moment and leaves your soul gasping and slavering for that comprehensible world you can't quite recall"

here

Spirals

How do we find certainty?

It seems to me that man has been turning himself in circles for thousands of years - constantly falling back onto what has been before - mutating it - tweaking it - unable to decide whether the spiral of his achievement is screwing upward or downward.
As for me, I am hopelessly lost in that convoluted uncertainty of knowledge. It seems impossible to maintain humility, openness - to stretch toward invention and simultaneously kneel before the wisdom of the past. I can react to the thought of the generation before me - embrace a certain rejected part of the past - and in doing so only add my voice to the chorus of my own generation whose thought will, in its turn be reacted against by my children or grandchildren and perhaps, in the distant future, re-embraced by my frustrated descendants. Unless I ignore all this, certainty - even about scripture itself - would seem unattainable.

But maybe we aren't meant to find it.

J. Bronowski, a renowned biologist, said "When knowledge becomes dogmatic certainty, tyrrany results." (paraphrased)

Science (which is merely Latin for knowledge), according to Bronowski, too often becomes a quest for power and control of the universe. What twentieth century physics has taught science (or ought to have taught - a great number of evolutionists and logical positivists hold their theoretical ground like the best fundamentalists) is that certainty about the universe flits further and further away the more we swipe at it with our nets. Science, then, Bronowski says (and with him many others, like Stephen Hawking), must not be a search for an immutable goal, but a self-aware, continuing exercise in wonder.

I fear that if we don't, in theology and philosophy, take this same line - however maddening I may find it to be so uncertain of my convictions - our certainty will remain a scepter by which we are all gods - striving to control not only each other and our world but God himself.

Joop

To everyone who's been occasionally checking this blog only to be disappointed at my lack of updation. Very sorry.

I have been on a short writing hiatus - during which time I found out I'm going to be a father.

Feel free to congratulate me.