Quizzical Quizzes

I found this quiz via Kevin:

Your Candy Heart Says "Hug Me"

A total sweetheart, you always have a lot of love to give out. Your heart is open to where ever love takes you! Your ideal Valentine's Day date: a surprise romantic evening that you've planned out Your flirting style: lots of listening and talking What turns you off: fighting and conflict Why you're hot: you're fearless about falling in love

That works for me, for the most part, save for conflict. I love debate, everyone knows that.

I did another for good measure:

Your 2005 Song Is

Since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson "But since you've been gone I can breathe for the first time I'm so moving on" In 2005, you moved on.

This one is interesting, because many of the artists to choose from in the quiz I've either never heard of or never heard. There were two groupings of artists that had one artist I actually recognized and liked, so I was able to pick somewhat less than randomly, though. I've never heard the song I apparently "am."

So what are y'alls results on these?

Uh, Ok: The AFA Puzzles Me Again

So, I get the latest complaint about NBC content from Don Wildmon of the American Family association:

Dear Timothy, The February 6 episode of NBC's Las Vegas contained a scene inside a strip club. The content of that scene was extremely graphic.

Ok, that makes sense so far. What follows, however, I found hard to fathom:

We have provided a video of the scene below.

NBC aired this scene during prime-time hours when they knew millions of children would likely be watching. But NBC didn't care if they exposed children to this kind of material. Please take action below and help us help our children.

[…]

Rather than trying to describe it to you, I would rather you watch it yourself. After watching the video, please follow the instructions to file your official complaint with the FCC. It will only take a couple of minutes to file the complaint. Do it for your children and grandchildren. After you file your complaint, please forward this to friends and family.

WARNING: This scene taken from the NBC program Las Vegas is highly offensive.

Most of the emphasis is mine. So the AFA found this program so offensive that they want all of their mailing list recipients to watch it? I am all for insuring people don't just start complaining to the FCC about something they have no idea about, but still, it seems very strange to essentially be getting more people to see something that is allegedly very offensive. (I did not view the link myself.)

The AFA just puzzles me a lot of the time.

Da Vinci Outreach?

This Washington Post article is a good read:

As a conservative evangelical leader, Josh McDowell is one of the last people you'd expect to urge young Christians to see “The Da Vinci Code,” the upcoming movie based on the phenomenally best-selling novel. After all, the book argues that Jesus sired a line of royalty before he died on the cross — Mary Magdalene being pregnant with his child — and that it was covered up by religious leaders through the centuries.

But McDowell, author of “The Da Vinci Code — A Quest for Truth,” not only urges a trip to the theater, but also advises everybody to read the novel by Dan Brown.

Interesting. Do I agree? We'll, I've recommended the book to folks, so I suppose I do.

The XX Winter Olympic Games Begin

Well, another Olympic Games has begun, and I think it got off to a good start. Winter Olympics are always my favorites, and it seems like so long ago that we last had one. I know that other than with the occasional oddity in scheduling, the games pretty much fall every four years, but the last four years seem so eventful the last games seem almost as distant as Nagano.

I liked the opening ceremony this time around. I wasn't sure where they were going at first with the mass of people toward the beginning, but when they turned into a “giant skier” I was sold. I liked the placard bearers who “wore the Alps” — that was unique. As always it's nice to see the excited athletes from places that generally don't see snow too. The 80's music was interesting — I have to wonder exactly who decided that was the right mood for the parade. Hmm. The Renaissance scene with the floating sun and moon, Birth of Venus, etc. was creative and fitting. The strange, modern dance after that did nothing for me, however. The Ferrari was a creative touch that surely will remain unique to Torino. I also liked the acrobats who managed to get into the shape of a dove — that was really rather impressive.

But, the big highlights were at the end, in my opinion. The lighting of the cauldron is always exciting, and the spectacular method they had for this lighting was really impressive, I think. But the classy ending was perhaps the best surprise. Luciano Pavarotti did a marvelous job with “Nessun Dorma” in an impressive faux opera stage, that even included a chandelier.

Beijing has a hard act to follow in 2008.

Minions of the Right

This is a disturbing tidbit:

In the United Church of Christ, local churches are fully autonomous. They own their property, their endowments, their membership contributions, and any other assets they have accrued over the life and history of the congregation. Lyle Schaller has described the United Church of Christ less as a denomination than a “voluntary affiliation of local congregations.” A 2/3 vote by any congregation is all that is needed to leave, and to take with them millions of dollars in assets. For this reason, they have been aggressively targeted by the religious right and their minions.

Dorhauer clearly is exactly the kind of person he loathes: an extremist. The article makes references to a number of churches and pastors who have rejected the direction of the United Church of Christ, including my own, St. Paul's Evangelical Church (and our pastor Mark Friz). The assertion that my church left the UCC under coercion is absurd; I think many, myself included, were hesitant simply because we did not follow the workings of the denomination that closely (being autonomous, the church did not pass on the parts of the denomination that were problematic). Nevertheless, after examining the record of the UCC, I was proud to cast my vote in 1998 to disfellowship with the denomination despite my continued affection for much of what was the Evangelical and Reformed church of the past.

To reject the UCC does not mean one is part of the far right. As one who finds himself generally most comfortable within neo-orthodox circles, it would be hard to accuse me of being among the ranks of Falwell and Robertson. This is not a right versus left issue, it is the continuation of the age old battle between orthodoxy from heterodoxy.

The UCC is not just a liberal leaning mainline denomination. It is generally agreed upon to be the farthest left leaning mainline — going far beyond the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and either major Baptist denomination. Of the other mainlines, I've followed controversies most in the UMC and PC (USA) and I'd note that both continue to, at least hesitantly, fall on the Biblical side of major issues such as the uniqueness of Jesus in the process of salvation. The UCC, on the other hand, has slid far off the map to the fringes of orthodoxy, to the extent that even its own joke about the name standing for “Unitarians Considering Christ.”

They are certainly within their rights to go in that direction. But they should recognize that not every church wishes to follow in their path to a pluralist theology. Choosing a different one does not show some imagined infidelity to the denomination, but rather a rightful usage of the ability to choose our own destiny.

Monday Madness on Tuesday: True/False

Christopher participated in Monday Madness this week, and I thought I would too. It is true or false week.

I consider myself to be very organized: False. I often mean well, but am bad at keeping up. After three or four years of trying, I have recently managed to get most (but not all) of my e-mail and computer files organized (a project that I started several times, the final attempt taking over a year to complete). In paper stuff, I have a nice new file cabinet, but I'm bad about adding new file folders as often as I should. I'm also bad about properly categorizing new books as I get them, etc., etc., etc. Right now, I can't sit in my reading chair, once again.

I tend to get more done when I’m pressed for time: True. If the deadline is looming, but not so close as to drive me crazy, that is when I get the ideal amount of work done. Too far away (or non-existant) and I work on other things; too close and I merely run around like a chicken with my head cut off before madly completing the work at the cost of sanity.

Multi-tasking is something I do often: True. I didn't know any other way of working was possible in today's always-connected world.

I might be a perfectionist: True. I'd get a lot more accomplished if I wasn't. Typically, on any non-deadlined project, I will spend months (or even years) doing cathedral-building like work. I'll lay the groundwork for something far over-engineered for my purposes. The only way I end up getting a project to completion is when it receives a deadline (or I otherwise realize the necessity of finishing it up) and then I switch to pragmatic mode and nix the grand ambitions… most of the time. I can still wander off and start back to the bigger plans, at which point I have to reign myself back in. This blog's software is a good example. SAFARI originally took a year (about eleven months too long) to build, because I over-engineered it. That was 2000, and my hand was forced when we wanted to go live with a new church web site that would use it on June 1, 2000. Afterwards, I immediately started on a new version — the one this blog runs — but did not get anywhere major with it until December of 2004 when the old software for this blog quit working and I needed something ASAP.

I enjoy Mondays as much as I enjoy Fridays: True. I like many of the things I do and the people I work with, and so while I enjoy getting a break on the weekend (sometimes — often I end up working on Saturday, though), I'm not disappointed to get started again.

If I didn’t make a list (or hang a post-it note) I’d forget what it is I need to do: True. I don't make lists, and I do eventually remember, but some things just get passed by because I don't remember them in the midst of more important things.

On the Meaning of a Written Work

The article was merely a call for increased awareness of this serious identity and intellectual property issue that has so far remained unknown to many. Nevertheless, in the May 7, 2005 Post-Dispatch, a letter to the editor slammed the piece, asking me, “Do you harbor the same querulously anti-free-enterprise bias against people who invest in property on the premise that it will gain in value to their advantage?” (Bradshaw 33). Now, clearly, the letter writer had seen my piece as encompassing a lot more area than I did. To him, I had written a piece that attacked the very essence of American free market capitalism. A Reader Response critic would not overlook this, but a genetic critic (or a formal critic, for that matter) would surely take issue with that interpretation of my work, just as I did.

So, the question is, did I somehow “compass more” than I meant to? Well, to the extent that one could argue my article was written poorly, perhaps I would cede that it is possible. If, as Hirsch says, no “determinate verbal meaning” exists if the author has “bungled,” writing something confusing would essentially create a vacuum where the author will be rightly misconstrued (23). Conversely, Hirsch and Pope are right to assert so long as the work is properly and clearly constructed, the reader is not justified in attributing more than the author – in the example that would be me – intended in a work such as this. Attributing more opinions to me than I expressed eliminated that reader’s ability to “understand” my work and therefore his ability to actually judge my opinion (27). In somewhat of a reversed version of what Hirsch said the critic Cleanth Brooks did (25), the letter writer attributed the antithesis of his own apparent feelings to me and then responded to that projection rather than sticking to my “probable” (and, for that matter, relevant) “attitudes,” as Hirsch puts it.

Having said that, whether the historicist is correct across the board is a topic that is possible to quibble with. My op-ed was standard prose written to relay specific, factual information and then provide an opinion on the very narrow subject of that information. On the other hand, had my piece been something more art-like, such as a poem or a drama, it may, in fact, be possible for my work to exceed the area I knowingly plotted for it (or, indeed, in mediocrity, failed to fill). The reason for this distinction is that poesy is something that relays an experience and that must be actively “translated” into meaning by the reader; it is intended to evoke a sense of “having experienced thus and so” in the reader not to relay simple, cold facts. Therefore, if I write a haiku and someone gets a sense of meaning out of it beyond what I “compassed,” that is somewhat more reasonable than the above incident, for my poetry is purposely designed to have less firm boundaries.

Whereas non-fiction prose is often intended to relay a specific, objective conclusion, poesy is conversely open-ended. To ask what the meaning of a really good drama, such as Hamlet, is seems almost as absurd as to ask what the meaning of the nightly news is. Good poesy creates a bubble of experience, not a set of propositions. As such, it leaves at least some of the meaning to the one entering that experience. Yet it must be conceded that in making this argument I have “compassed” this wider swath of area, where the “meaning” is conveying an experience, within the classification of that which is poetry, even if the precise “meaning border” of a poetic work is not fixed. This is why I only hesitantly question the truth of Pope’s statement above. It still seems to be mostly true; it is just a bit more of a grey area in poetry than fact-focused prose.

In the end, it still remains that normally the author has a definite purpose, and, at the least, the reader owes it to the author not to claim the author meant more than he or she clearly did. If an objective meaning does indeed exist, Hirsch’s argument of tying that meaning to the “meaner” seems entirely appropriate (23). Whether the piece itself somehow means more in a Reader Response sort of way should be overlooked to allow proper response and judgment of the original work in sich.

A Question-Mark Against All Truths

In announcing the limitation of the known world by another that is unkown, the Gospel does not enter into competition with the many attempts to disclose within the known world some more or less unknown and higher former of existence and to make it accessible to men. The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question-mark against all truths. The Gospel is not the door but the hinge. The man who apprehends its meaning is removed from all strife, because he is engaged in a strife with the whole, even with existence itself.

—Karl Barth (Epistle to the Romans 35, Emphasis Mine)

I ran across this statement from Barth and thought it was worth posting. It seems like an interesting way to phrase how we should look at the Bible. The Bible is a tool — no, the tool — by which we can judge everything else. Beyond being truth within itself, it is also the touchstone to determine the truth of everything else. When we use this touchstone against everything in life, then we are indeed “engaging in a strife […] with existence itself.”

The latter sentence that I emphasized above is an important statement to go along side that. “The Gospel is not the door but the hinge.” That is true too. The Living Word, Jesus, is the door. We ought not place the word where the Word is. If we go too far, we commit idolatry by elevating the Scriptures above the point of the message. Alternately, if we don't go far enough, it becomes too easy to reshape Jesus to be how we want Him. It is a balancing act; our focus is on the door, but the hinge is the instrument by which we can easily open that door when led by the Holy Spirit.

The hinge is unique, just as the door it serves is unique. The Gospel is such a unique entity that Barth notes that it is not even in competition with “the many attempts” at truth. While all of our own reasoning on Earth hopefully will be in the right direction and pass the authenticity test, all of it is different from the Gospel because it comes from ourselves looking toward God; God's Word moves the opposite direction, uniquely coming from God to us, a group of fallen creatures who are otherwise too broken to get more than part way to where we should be. The Gospel's touchstone, reality-questioning status moves it from an option in a pluralistic world to the foundation upon which “truths” try to compete and any that do not fit within its framework ultimately wilt under its examination.

To borrow a phrase from Keats, “that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

I'm Hungry

But, it is late, and I should go to bed rather than getting something to eat. Still, a nice pizza would really hit the spot right now.

I Couldn't Make This Up

According to Reuters, pollution is for the birds. Or something like that.

A flock of pigeons fitted with mobile phone backpacks is to be used to monitor air pollution, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.

Now, let's just hope they signed up for enough Anytime minutes. Of course, if they switch to owls, Unlimited Nights and Weekends might be all that is needed.