Reading notes

Zeke L observes in a comment to advisorjim — and expands on the idea elsewhere — that

The bible is one of the worst offenders in terms of turning people liberal.

I add a confirming data point: My transformation from conservative to liberal happened some years ago while I was plunged into scripture- and Church history study the depths of which I had never engaged before. In the midst of this seminary study an awareness flashed across my internal sky like a bolt of lightning: I can either keep my (so-called) conservative points of view, or I can follow Jesus. I don’t know whether this is the case for everyone, but I was presented a choice. (Put another way, the choice presented itself to me as between conformity and, given what I’d learned, integrity.)

These days, in the aftermath of that revelation, I think that liberal, as it literally means —

liberal. adj 1: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; “a broad political stance”; “generous and broad sympathies”; “a liberal newspaper”; “tolerant of his opponent’s opinions” [syn: broad, large-minded, tolerant] 2: having political or social views favoring reform and progress 3: tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition [ant: conservative] 4: given or giving freely; “was a big tipper”; “the bounteous goodness of God”; “bountiful compliments”; “a freehanded host”; “a handsome allowance”; “Saturday’s child is loving and giving”; “a liberal backer of the arts”; “a munificent gift”; “her fond and openhanded grandfather” [syn: big, bighearted, bounteous, bountiful, freehanded, handsome, giving, openhanded] …

[Middle English, generous …]

— is aptly descriptive of the character of the Holy Spirit, and hence connotes a way of being to be aspired to, a pearl of great price, the seeking of which is discernable from that Spirit’s telltale signs:

The fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, gentleness (meekness, humility), [and] self-control (self-restraint, continence).

Unfortunately, these are not exactly the characteristics one thinks of as describing a people whose international policy is built on vengeance and enacted by war.

Man, Eugene nails our present misunderstanding of freedom in his Message paraphrase of the verse preceding —

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. …

If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

(Boldface added.)

2005-02-09 update:
Dale adds his observations, and of particular note that which was a boon to me in coming to grips with the seemingly incompatible Old Testament understanding of God relative to the New — “Barclay’s point was that ‘God has not changed, but man’s conceptions of God have changed’.”

I really do think the bible records humanity’s unfolding understanding of God, from humanity’s point of view, not God’s. From God’s point of view, he’s changeless; from our point of view he’s gotten more and more as presented by Jesus. Not because he’s changed, but because over time we’re seeing him more clearly. (My optometrist visit yesterday, from which I emerged “with new eyes” — that is, stronger contacts — makes seeing a particularly effective analogy for me right now.)

2005-02-12 update:
I think the evolution/creation argument is explained by — and made moot by — a similar difference in perspective: From God’s eternal point of view, everything he’s doing is creating, whereas from our human point of view, bound within time as we are, his creating looks to us like slow-motion evolving.

I imagine when you’re standing outside time, as God does, all your activity happens now — heck, I know even here for us humans when we get lost in creating art or music it feels like time stands still, even as the hours pass. So I think when God in his eternal workshop makes something cool, then steps back and says “Yes! It is good!”, millennia can have passed meanwhile back here at the (time-bound) ranch.

Everything evolves is one of the most bedrock observations I have of this world. I think another name for what I’m seeing is endless creation.

I remember thinking in high school, What if I could step off the timeline, pick it up off the page, and sight down it end to end like a rifle? Wouldn’t everything happening in time look present to me all at once, like how a telephoto lens compresses depth of field, making far-apart things look adjacent to each other, all the same distance away? I think eternity might therefore be like a 3-D+ telephoto hologram. (Except even more real than now, as C.S. Lewis envisions, just as now is more real than a hologram.)

Maybe the God “just a second” joke shaped my thinking, too. Even as we laugh out loud at the joke, I think it’s revealing a significant life truth.

2005-02-21 update:
Advisorjim discusses the Religious Right’s game plan concerning creationism with great skill and humor. He almost always catches behavioral underpinnings and sociological (mis)understandings that have gone right past me, and makes me say, Aha!