Blog Archives
What If – Nichole Nordeman
Here’s another Christian pop tune that I stumbled across in my travels. I like the song and don’t really know if it needs a video. But this video seems the least intrusive of all the others I saw at Youtube.
One of things I like about music is how it can create its own visual landscape of the imagination. So if the video just gets in the way, you can always sit back, turn your head the other way, and listen.
Related articles
- A Faithful Friend (karenbarnesjordan.wordpress.com)
- Mandisa – Stronger (mclark.wordpress.com)
Like this:
Mandisa – Stronger
I’ve been journeying through the past a lot here. But I’m not stuck in it. One of the nicer surprises that I’ve come across in the past few years is the ripening of Christian pop music. With exceptions on either side, I often find it more uplifting than mainstream pop. I say “with exceptions” because there are some new mainstream radio hits that I do like, and there are some Christian pop tunes that get a bit too fundamentalist for my liking (sometimes a good tune can be soured by fundamentalist lyrics). And yeah, I do have to be in the mood. But that’s true for any type of music, n’est-ce pas?
Anyhow, I hope you “dig” this just as much as I do… 
Today’s reading at Mass
The Resurrection Mass in Stavropoleos, oil on canvass via Wikipedia
I was talking on Facebook earlier this morning about synchronicity, magic and spirituality. Then later at Mass, this reading sort of stood out:
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces[a] of this world rather than on Christ. 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Source: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+2%3A6-15&version=NIV
It seemed like a funny kind of synchronicity in itself.
Related articles
- Missal Moments V: “The mystery of faith” (hughosb.wordpress.com)
- At closing Mass, Pope tells youth to follow Christ through his Church (onecatholicnews.wordpress.com)
- Colossians 2: 9 , 10 (jantzika.wordpress.com)
- The Reintroduction of Jesus Christ (Part Two) (lifebrook.wordpress.com)
- A Lesson on Corpus Christi Sunday (knightswalk.wordpress.com)
- What are you called? (nathangilreath.wordpress.com)
- Moments (mamadoveonabox.wordpress.com)
- Christ is our Life! (edenministriesonline.com)
- Faith Proved Genuine (wdednh.wordpress.com)
- Our Resurrection and Exaltation In Christ (gospelbondservant.com)
Review – Paul Tillich’s Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions
Tillich Park - new harmony indiana: paparutzi / christina rutz
This review also appears at Earthpages.org
I just finished reading Paul Tillich’s Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions (1963).
Although it seems Tillich is somewhat confined by his particular conceptual categories and dialectical mode of thinking when speaking of the complexities of life and spirit, I found some of his observations interesting.
Perhaps most noteworthy is his assertion that a religion must adapt and change in order to survive. It must “negate itself” (can you hear Hegel clapping?) to continue to live and breathe the Holy Spirit.
This is very much like Carl Jung’s argument, but I wasn’t too surprised to see no reference to Jung in this book (up until about 1990 it was common in the humanities and theology to ignore or discredit Jung’s thought).
Consider this quote, appearing near the end of the book:
We know today what a secular myth is. We know what a secular cult is. The totalitarian movements have provided us with both. Their great strength was that they transformed ordinary concepts, events, and persons into myths, and ordinary performances into rituals; therefore they had to be fought with other myths and rituals—religious and secular. You cannot escape them, however you demythologize and deritualize. They always return and you must always judge them again. In the fight of God against religion the fighter for God is in the paradoxical situation that he has to use religion in order to fight religion (pp. 93-94).
In The Undiscovered Self Jung said, several years before Tillich, “You can take away a man’s gods, but only to give him others in return” (1958, p. 63).
When speaking of the fight of “God against religion” Tillich is talking about movements such as Communism, Fascism and those ossified, oppressive structures that apparently no longer communicate the Holy Spirit (for Tillich, this includes the Catholic hierarchy and sacraments).
It seems he’s pointing to the idea that we cannot escape two main elements in the human adventure: Power and belief. Whether or not the powers and beliefs we encounter are truly in line with God’s will is a question that any mature person will always want to carefully examine.
And yes, it takes belief in God and God’s power to overcome elements that are not from God. On this point I fully agree with Tillich.
However, as I’ve indicated, there’s much in this work that I found limited by his personality structure, Protestant beliefs and historical position.
Of course, a similar charge could be leveled against me. And to his credit Tillich points to this concern in his discussion on dialogue vs. conversion, and the related idea of non-Christian criticisms of Christianity being positively transformed into healthy Christian self-criticism (Tillich is speaking on a group level here, but the same dynamic could be applied to individuals).
Still, I found the book’s overall approach a bit stiff and it contained not a few sweeping generalizations. At times it seems that Tillich is just playing a little philosophy game with a lot of general intellectual ideas. And then suddenly he’ll come back to being relevant and make a good point or two.
In fairness, the fact that I’m taking the time to write this indicates that I found this book far more accessible and meaningful than most of the dry bones theological works I’ve encountered.
While some readers at amazon.com see Tillich’s conclusion as a sort of syncretic cop out, I find it somewhat optimistic, if perhaps simplistic:
In the depth of every living religion there is a point at which the religion itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its particularity, elevating it to spiritual freedom and with it to a vision of the spiritual presence in other expressions of the ultimate meaning of man’s existence.
This is what Christianity must see in the present encounter of the world religions (p. 97).
I say simplistic because it seems there are many different kinds of spiritual presences, ranging from quite impure (i.e. spacey, gloomy and self-obscuring) to exceedingly pure (i.e. holy, uplifting and self-affirming), a point Jung also touches on in his discussion of numinosity (as did Rudolf Otto and others).
Now, Tillich does talk about differences concerning the idea of individuality (and problems in defining it) earlier in the book with his comparison of Christianity and Buddhism. So it’s not as if he overlooks this point completely.
But it remains unclear why in his conclusion he glosses over the central issue of different spiritual presences.
These shortcomings aside, Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions is a good little book and certainly worth the dollar I paid for it at the used bookstore.
–MC
Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace – Bob Dylan
You know, as a practising Christian I try hard not to judge others.
But there’s always the reality of people who are not sane and really quite bent on evil.
If you think I’m being xtreme, just take a look at this document. It’s a letter of agreement signed by Adolf Hitler and the British PM Neville Chamberlain.
And we know what Hitler did shortly after.
As Bob Dylan put it:
Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Note: Handwritten portions have been moved toward center to fit into this blogspace.
