Now there’s a snappy, attention grabbing title.  Although, it’s not completely honest.  I’m not really here to present any revolutionary new theology that will change your life.  I am here to do a slight redefinition of theology that will, at least it has in my opinion, make theology a lot more relevant and understandable.

But first.  back on my tumblelog (opens in a new window if you don’t have it open already), scroll to just below the link to this post, and play the audio file while you read this.  

Tonight I attended a talk about the life of John Coltrane, and the struggle he went through to explore his relationship with God through his music.  A funny notion to many people.  Music is nice, but that’s not where you look for God.

Three quotes kept popping into my head through the talk, and it’s taken me a little bit of effort to string them together, but with a bit of prayer, it seemed to click.

First from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

…like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Second from the play Underneath the Lintel:

Would you recognize a miracle if it was on your doorstep?

And lastly, the greatest commandment of them all:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

God works in funny ways.  He works in places you don’t expect Him to.  He works at times when you don’t expect him to.  He works in ways you don’t expect him to.  He likes to shake things up and take you by surprise.  The thing is, often, it’s easy to overlook it.  What Annie Dillard says really resonates with me; if you open your eyes and allow yourself to see it, you will see God working everywhere.  And once you start seeing His work, you just notice it more and more.  It’s inspiring and gives me great reason to be thankful.

But that’s just it.  Do we recognize it?  Is it easy to recognize?  No.  It can be very, very difficult to see God’s work at times.  There are times in life where I’m sure it’s hard enough just to be sure that He exists, let alone to see His works all over the place.  So often, though, so often He is standing right in front of us on our doorsteps, waiting for us to invite Him into our houses, into our lives, but we cannot see Him.  We cannot see past the struggles in this world that blind the Lord from our sight.

But we try.  It’s always important to try.  The greatest commandment of them all tells us to love the Lord our God with every ounce of our being.  Put everything you have into it.  It doesn’t give us a checklist of things we have to do, there is no bar that we have to surpass, we simply have to give it our best.  And God recognizes when we are trying.  And if you try to live for God with every ounce of your being, He has the grace and generosity to give us gifts that instill in us peace, that refresh us, that secure us, that allow us to love, that allow us to minister to others.  If you just try your hardest, He will reward you with rivers of living water.

But, these things are not easy to do.  This is why we like going to Church and hearing explanations of how scripture reveals to us both the character of God and our relationship with Him.  It is not a small topic, and it is not an easy topic.  In generalities, the institutional church has created somewhat of a definition of what “theology” is.  Usually, it’s writings that reveal God to us in some form or another, and the state(s) of our relationship with Him.  There are lots and lots of books on theology if you’re interested.  However, what if I presented this thought to you?  That the “rules” of what theology “is” and “isn’t” are so strict that there’s barely any room left for God?

The arts are one of the greatest forms of human expression.  Writings such as novels, prose, and poetry can have profound impacts on our lives.  Music touches all of us in some way or another.  The visual arts such as painting often can express and evoke emotions unexpectedly and abruptly.  There’s a beauty in the arts that is rarely found elsewhere; an inherent layered characteristic that makes everything say far more than the face value.

But more interesting than the art is the artists.  These are people who (for the most part) put everything they have into what they do.  They throw themselves headfirst into their art, desperate to get it out, to get a part of their being into some form of medium.  

Do you think a person has to be a believer in God for God to work through them? 

When you love with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, you are loving for God.  And I think that God sees that.  And I think God works through people who throw everything they have and they are into something.  Can God be in a painting?  Can a saxophone melody be as much of a prayer as any words are?  Can colors and tones and textures reveal God?  I think they can.

We’ve fallen into a bit of a rut.  We look to writings for theology.  We look to writings to see God’s words and work.  I think it’s far more prolific than that.  Great theologians have a gift that God allows them to explore and explain their relationship with God through words.  It’s not an easy thing to do, and it takes great talent, patience, and love.  But, why just writing?  Why can’t we discover just as much about God through a painting?  Why can’t we relate to somebody’s longing for inner peace through an instrumental?  Why are these considered to be secondary supplements to writings?  Artists, writers, musicians, they all pour their entire beings into what they do.  They have to.  So why single out writing?

I have a challenge that I’m going to undertake, and I suggest that everyone else does too.  Open your eyes.  Look for God.  That struggle you’re having; look for answer your heart needs to hear not only in words, but through visual and auditory arts as well.  Look and listen for that desperate calling out to God for redemption that many artists, not just writers, express.

God gifts us all in special ways.  Some people can write.  Some people can take pictures.  Some people can play music.  Some people can paint.  Some people can love in extraordinary situations.  Some people can tell stories.  Some people can counsel.  Some people can pray.  Some people can make pastries.  Some people build bridges.  Some people can listen.  The point is, God has given them all gifts for his Glory to be exercised in different ways.  So next time you see that painting, or hear that saxophone solo, or eat that piece of bread, or see that beautiful building, or read a book, think the uncommon thought that what you hold in your hand might be a gift made out of love as service to God.  Writings are wonderful, fabulous gifts that we have, but I think often we make the mistake of thinking that’s the only place where God’s words are recorded, when really, it’s all around us, everywhere, every day.

And that is something to be truly thankful for.

I’ve had a mentally tumultuous past couple days.  I’ve had a lot of different things going through my mind.  Oft, I find this is when my brain tends to kick into overdrive and blow things way out of proportion.  Which I think is exactly what happened.  There’s no need to feel the way I do, no need to worry what I’ve been worrying about.  “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6:27)  “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).

This section of Matthew is, as those who know me probably already know, one of my favorites.  It has such a strong message both in how to live our lives and to trust in God.  I am guilty of worrying.  I think I probably got it from my Mom, who is such a caring, compassionate person she can’t help but think of every possible outcome of a scenario.  It is a habit I need to break.

I was getting sick of worrying, so last night I went for a long hard run.  I was exhausted at the end of it, and I felt great.  I was sweaty, my mouth was dry, my lungs burned, and my legs quivered.  My “self” did not want to run.  I forced it to.  This is akin to me saying, “Brain, shut up.  You’re being ridiculous.”  I then turned off the computer, turned off the music, and all the other distractions that have become so assimilated into our lives.  I collected my candles all onto the coffee table, and lit them, one by one.  This is how, at the very moment, I am writing this blog post by.  I even have the screen brightness only at the first notch.  No sounds other than the soft tapping of the keys.

Fire has a primal, unexplainable beauty to it.  Humankind has done so many absolutely amazing things; we’ve developed societies (a bigger feat than most would admit), we’ve built the pyramids, we’ve built the great wall of China, we’ve sent people to the moon, we’ve split the atom, we’ve built skyscrapers, the sheer fact that we have devised artificial brains inside of a microprocessor.  These are absolutely astounding feats that, until they happened, were practically fantasies.  Yet, despite being surrounded by these amazing feats of humankind, rarely do any of them captivate and transfix our attention like fire.

I used to be very insecure in myself.  I was tortured in the caste system of cliques in Jr. High and High School.  I genuinely believed that the people in such and such group were completely different than me.  The cool kids were completely different than me.  The jocks were completely different than me.  As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to see that it’s not true.  There are so many elements in the world around us that impact every single one of us the same way.  A common bond between all of humanity that removes our differences and makes us brothers and sisters.  We are not so different.

Fire is one of those things.  I can say with near utmost confidence that each and every pair of eyes that gaze on this text on a computer screen have been locked to the flame on a candle at some earlier time.  Those same eyes have also probably stared, unblinking, at a fire in a firepit, watering from the smoke.  Fire has a near-mystical ability to free the mind, to remove the world around us and let our thoughts drift through philosophy.  Fire has the talent of making us equals.

This should be no surprise to us that fire seems to touch us at some deeper level than hydrocarbon combustion should.  Numerous times in the Bible, God uses fire as a display to us, his people.  When Moses encounters God on Horeb, an “angel of the LORD appeared to him in the flames of fire from within a bush.” (Exodus 3:2)  As Moses led the Israealites out of Egypt, “the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light…” (Exodus 13:21)  When Moses leads the people out to Mt. Sinai to meet with God, it was “covered in smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire.” (Exodus 19:18)  Examples go on and on.  Fire is more than the science behind it.

Fire is a part of our soul.  We are entranced and transfixed by it because it is a part of who God is, and as such, a part of ourselves.  Most importantly, fire can keep our eyes occupied and mouth closed long enough for us to finally pay attention to those other holes in our head, our ears.  Listening, as I have discovred, is truly a great gift given to us.  There is so much to learn through those vibrations that hammer against our eardrums.  Listening also encourages thinking.  Not the quick, hurried firing of neurons that goes on when we synthesize our thoughts into speech, but rather, a calmer, more collected thought process.  It is hard to be pensive with a wagging tounge.

And this is what I’m getting at.  Fires make us quiet.  Fires allow us to think and to listen.  Fire is a part of who God is, and thus, a part of who we are.  Shouldn’t it be fairly obvious then that the effects that fire has on us are things that God wants so desperately for us to have?  Listening, and the ability to sit quietly and think, are truly gifts from God.  And much needed gifts.  If one has not sat in silence in a while, and attempts to, it’s amazing how many sources of noise will make themselves apparent.  It’s everywhere, and it’s infectious.

Now, this has been somewhat tangent to what I’m getting at.  I’ve been working on listening.  My brain has been stupid lately, and I’ve been doing my best to make it behave.  Someone who continually makes me rethink my relationship wiht God wrote to me today, “I hope. . .you find peace, God’s amazing, crazy peace.”  That really struck a chord with me.  God’s peace is amazing, and it is crazy.  It’s crazy both in that God’s peace is so ridiculously counter-cultural it’s not even funny, and it’s crazy that after everything that humanity’s relationship with God has been through, He still offers it to us!  If there wasn’t a more obvious reason to be thankful…

I mulled this over for a bit, and I responded saying that God’s peace was probably right in front of me, and that I just needed to recognize it.  I needed to listen to God.  Sure enough, once I accpeted the fact that I need to be able to recognize God’s offering of peace, it showed up right away.  When I got home from work tonight and opened my mailbox, there was a card from one of my best friends.  Contained inside the card were words that offered comfort to a discomforted soul.  It immediately brought a smile to my face, and it immediately made me realize that God is looking out for us.  He, like any good father, will do the best to protect and comfort his children.  Jasmine, thank you very, very much for the card.  It means a lot, even if you feel that the words you wrote don’t.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations.  This has been a long and meandering blog post.  I’d like to leave you with this challenge.  Find a bunch of candles and put them on a table.  Make sure it’s night time.  Light them.  Turn off the lights.  Turn off the noises around you to the best of your ability.  Find a good book, no Tom Clancey, no Dan Brown, no Michael Chrichton.  Find something that challenges, that encourages you to rethink how you view yourself or how you view the world around you or how you view God or how you view your place in this world.  Sit on the floor.  Read slowly.  Stop every page or so, stare at the flames on the candle, and digest what you’ve read.  Think about it.  For as long as you feel you need to, and then continue reading.

I think you’ll find that the time will go by quicker than you think, and you’ll discover that hearing the silence is an experience that is fundamentally enjoyable. 

Moving to Winnipeg has been, to some degree, a life changing experience for me.  I mean, besides the obvious reason that a lot in my life has changed.  Over the past few months, I have undergone a huge change in who I understand myself to be, and who I see myself becoming.

When I left Edmonton, I left behind a lot of the things that kept me happy.  I left behind my family, I left behind my friends, and I left behind my Church; moreover I left my position helping lead Worship at St. John’s.  I had always enjoyed leading Worship, and it was a place that I felt called to, but it wasn’t until I left my position that I realized how important it was to me.  It was an active involvement in my faith that kept me close to God and kept me happy.

I found myself in Winnipeg: no friends, no family, and no anchor to God.  I went through some pretty intense loneliness, and found myself extremely unhappy at times.  Some of the feelings I felt reminded me of times in the past where I was at places I’d never want to be again.

There was a brief period of time where I turned to prayer, intensely.  I stopped playing my guitar.  I didn’t read, except for passages in the Bible I felt called to read.  I watched no TV, no movies.  Played no games.  When I wasn’t working, I was reflecting and praying.  I have come out of that struggle, my personal time in the desert, a changed person.  I have a hugely changed view of myself and what I am. 

That intense period of reflection was the beginning of it all; the main catalyst that has driven a change inside me.  I am far more realized now than I ever have felt before.

I am music.  It is fundamental to me, to my soul.  I am no longer content with learning music.  I need to write my own.  I need to have that outlet.  I am unhappy if I cannot play music.  Moreso than ever, I have realized how fundamental music is to who I am and what I am.  I am also not defined by my job.  I want to be as good as I can be at it, but I do not want to be known primarily for being a meteorologist.  I am social.  I am happiest with people, and I am a fish out of water when I don’t have that opportunity.  I want to get married at some point.  I want to have (a) kid(s) some day.  My faith is central to my values and my happyness.  I need to be more thankful.  Despite a rocky start, I have been extremely blessed in life and I am responsible to give back.

All of these things were in the back of my head before, but I did not have the resolve to them that I have now.  The biggest surprise for me was music.  I had always thought that it was just something I enjoyed.  To realize that it is so central to me, that whoever I end up with, it has to be something I can share with that person.  It cannot be segmented from the rest of my life.

I am very glad that I’ve had this realization.  I am more comfortable with myself than I have ever been.  I feel, for the first time in a long time, feel extremely comfortable with who I am, what I am, and where I am.  I am happy, I am comfortable with my own skin, I feel secure.

I am going to try and focus on some of these newfound things.  I am going to start by trying harder to write music.  I recently wrote a song that, for the first time, I truly felt like it was an extension of myself.  I listen to it and I hear a part of me.  It is one of the greatest feelings I’ve ever had, and I want to work on making that happen more often.

I am not the same person I was when I came to Winnipeg.  I am realized.

Here’s an essay I found while rooting around on my external hard drive the other day. I wrote it for a Christian Theology class I took, and it’s really neat to look back and see where I was along my journey when I wrote this. Also, my writing sure could be better:

Science and Religion
In today’s North American society, one of the hottest topics of debate is the apparent conflict between science and religion. This debate has oft been understood as the Science versus Religion debate, and not the Science and Religion debate. There are many reasons for this, the largest being that whoever the “winner” is, it has the potential to fundamentally affect every single person. It is because of that, the power of this debate, which causes everybody to cast their own opinion into the fray. The problem with this is that not everybody is well-informed on the topic. Many are stuck into popular definitions of the terminology, trapping themselves into a scenario where they must choose one or the other; they must choose their side on this battleground. The power of topically uneducated masses can be unstoppable, and Galileo expressed the importance of being informed when he said, “. . . for this would be the same as if an absolute prince, knowing he had unlimited power to issue orders and compel obedience, but being neither a physician nor an architect, wanted to direct medical treatment and the construction of buildings, resulting in serious danger to the life of the unfortunate sick and in the obvious collapse of structures.” (Galileo) Along the same lines, the injection of non-professional views into this debate infects and destabilizes the argument, filling it with inconsistencies and glaring holes. The first step I took to begin my long journey of developing my own link between science and religion was to enter into professional definitions of the terms involved in the debate. When looked at through professional definitions, science and religion are complimentary; each reveals aspects of God’s works and God’s words.

The largest problem with the Science/Religion debate is that it is filled with falsehoods. The largest falsehood is the very title: Science versus Religion. This dichotomy present in the title simply doesn’t exist. Like most things in life, this issue simply cannot be simplified into two sides, black and white. This is shown simply if you look towards the theists in the debate: there are Young-Earth Creationists, Progressive Creationists, Evolutionary Creationists, and Deistic Evolutionists, among others. How do you address this problem of having creationists who believe in evolution in the Science versus Religion debate? The answer is quite simple: throw out popular definitions. Creation is simply the product of the Creator, not the commonly-believed notion that our origins were De Novo1 in six twenty-four hour days. Evolution is a scientific theory of the progression of molecules to people, free of the dysteleological implications commonly associated with it today. Science is a method of studying nature; making philosophical inferences are outside the realm of what science is able to do. Religion is more or less metaphysics: the philosophical inferences we make of our world. Using these professional definitions, we can relate science and religion using the Metaphysics-Physics Principle. What this principle says is that metaphysics, our ultimate beliefs of our world, are contained within religion and philosophy. Disconnected from that is Physics: theories and laws, observations and experiments; science. In order to connect the two, you have to make a jump. Whether it be through reflection, faith, or judgment you have to take observations and make something from them. Related to the Metaphysics-Physics Principal is the Message-Incident (MI) Principle. It defines scripture into two parts, the message and the incidental vessel. The message is the underlying theological message, whereas the incidental vessel is the culture and science at the time of writing used to covey the message. The message is the metaphysics of the scripture, whereas the incident is the physics. This principle was developed to address epistemological gaps, such as the ancient phenomenological perspective of nature, which is far removed from our modern perspective of nature. The MI Principle is heavily based on hermeneutics: tools that let us successfully interpret writings over a thousand years old.

Hermeneutics are tools that let us use our professional definitions to help close gaps between us and the ancients that have left us writings, windows into their world. As a personal note, it was not until I began to develop this understanding that I realized I was guilty of the exact issues hermeneutical principles address. Hermeneutics play a large role in my developing relationship between science and religion, as they address the very issues that cause the conflict in the first place. There are several hermeneutical principles that I found very useful for my own understanding. The first is Literalism, simply stating that some of scripture is literal and some isn’t; nobody can be literal all the time, and it is up to the reader not only to decide what is literal and what isn’t, but to justify it as well. Building on that is the Principal of Accommodation, which is the adaptation of the Message to human level in order to be understood. The most poignant example of Accommodation that very much struck home with me and offered strong proof is Incarnation. God became flesh, human, in Jesus only to be happy, to be sad, to love, to suffer, to hurt, to give His message to us in ways that are intensely human, intensely real, intensely touchable, and intensely familiar. That being said, in terms of Creation, it makes sense that God would choose not to reveal how He created the universe to a culture three thousand years ago through Big Bang Theory and Evolutionary Biology, topics way beyond the scientific understanding of the day. What good would be explaining something nobody would understand? A third hermeneutical principal I found helpful was the inherent scientific assumptions of the author, demonstrated in class through the one-seed theory of reproduction. This principal encourages you to put yourself into the mindset of the author, see the world how they saw the world. In the case of the bibles of the author, they saw female reproductive organs as a field which the male plants a seed in. This understanding of their agrarian metaphors to understand human reproduction solves our modern problem with the seemingly sexist view on reproductive problems in the Bible. Inherent scientific assumptions are a small section of a larger hermeneutical principal, Historical Criticism. Generalized, this principal tells us to realize that “The bible is the Word of God given in the words of men in history.” (Ladd) We have to understand biblical text in their historical setting; researching the time period in which the literature was written is key to understanding it. Another critical understanding that must be reached is the ancient phenomenological perspective of nature. This means that the reader has to understand the world around them as the ancients did: what they saw is what they believed. Their world-view included beliefs such as: they lived in a 3-tiered universe where the Earth was immovable, had foundations, an underside, had ends which were surrounded by a circumferential ocean, was circular, and was flat. They believed that the sun moved across the sky, that there was a solid structure over the earth (the firmament) holding up waters above, and that stars actually fell onto the Earth. These are all things that today we wouldn’t even think twice about considering, but this was their fundamental understanding of the universe, and is reflected in their writings. The last hermeneutical principal that I found incredibly useful was Phenomenon of the Biblical Text, which states simply that the Bible is an incidental vessel for a message, and that the text itself has characteristics unique to it. These characteristics can include the language used2, textual errors3, form and literary devices4, and the aforementioned ancient science in the text. The next step to take, now that these hermeneutical principals have been added to the arsenal, is to begin to set up a framework between Science and Religion. John F. Haugt presented a “Four C’s” framework of conflict, contrast, contact, and confirmation. “I think that the ‘contact’ approach, supplemented by that of ‘confirmation’, provides the most fruitful and reasonable response that has held so many scientists away from an appreciation of religion, and even a larger number of religious people from enjoying the discoveries of science.” (Haugt) Ian G. Barbour presented his own framework, the “CIDI” model. This approach relies on conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. William Paley’s model of integration was based on the “Watchmaker Argument”, simply that if you find a watch in a field, you would assume there was a watchmaker; when we see design in nature, we should assume that there is a designer. All of these above frameworks both have their strengths and weaknesses, and it is key that we learn to mix and match typologies to create the framework that works for us.

My views on the topic have dramatically evolved since I began my journey. Coming to an understanding of popular perspectives, professional perspectives, and developing the skills to read the Bible in it’s ancient context have let me not only define my viewpoint with more clarity, but be able to support it as well. When I came into this course, I believed that God is the Creator and that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was resurrected. Religion was, and always has been, important in my life. Throughout this fast-paced journey, I have come to see why Religion has always held a spot in me. I have always seen something special in nature. Every single aspect of nature has always seemed to call out something more to me. Ever since I was very young, I have always loved thunderstorms. Through my education, I’ve learned differential equations of motion such as:

that can be used to describe the conditions that lead to their development, yet watching one form is something beyond math and physics, it touches us deeper. Despite its complexity, it always seems to work. Beauty, I feel, has been one of my strongest driving forces towards Religion. Hugh Ross wrote “The Creator & the Cosmos” in which he outlines evidence for the fine tuning of the universe: what the outcome would be if many of our physical constants were slightly different then their actual value. More or less, the universe would cease to exist. It is this complexity, this design, which put me along the lines of Paley’s watchmaker argument: the fact that something so complex works so well, and above that touches me somewhere deeper than an intellectual level lead me to believe in a Creator. In that, I viewed Religion as what I made of the world, my metaphysics. Throughout this course, my view has not changed. I still believe that Religion is my metaphysic, my ultimate belief about this physical world we live in. When it comes to science, when I came into this course I had a firm understanding of the mechanics of the physical world, the ability to explain away many “miracles” we experience5, and a faith in evolution. My beliefs put me in a difficult position; coming into this course I was trapped inside a dichotomy, torn in half, by two beliefs culture told me were opposites. The two most fundamental changes in my perception of science and religion have been triggered by the Metaphysics-Physics Principal and the Message-Incident Principal; these have allowed me to break out of the dichotomy and realize the important link between science and religion.

By separating the worldview from they physics, the message from the vessel, you are able to see the message through the outside influences. The message of Genesis 1 is not that God created earth and man in six twenty-four hour days, but that God created Earth and Man, and that his Creation was good. His method of creation is not the focus of the text, whether it be de novo or through big bang theory and evolution. Science is a tool God has given us to study his Creation, to allow us to examine the laws and structure He set in place to create a sustainable place for us to live in.

Everything I have learned in Christian Theology 350 has only reinforced my belief that science is a tool that can be used to bring us closer to God and understanding His works. Religion is a gift God has given us that enables us to receive and appreciate the Message God has for us. Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37 to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” The theories and principals explored in this paper have allowed me to create a framework between my emotions and my intellect, my religion and my science, that allows me to fully appreciate God’s kingdom.

Bibliography

Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,” in Maurice A. Finocchiaro, editor and translator, The Galileo Affair: A Document History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 100-101

George Eldon Ladd, New Testament & Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967) p. 12

John F. Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), p. 4

Footnotes

1. From nothing; quick and complete.
2. Greek used in Bible was “Don Cherry” Greek.
3. Errors in translation and in replication.
4. Parallel panels and chiastic structure are used in Genesis.
5. Retrograde motion, rainbows, crepuscular rays, halos, sun dogs, solar and lunar eclipses, among others.

I thought it was a fun little read.

Please note, the following quote is fairly graphic. It may upset some readers:

On an overcast Wednesday afternoon last December, a skinny white teenager shuffled into the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, with an assault rifle hidden under his black hoodie. A cheery holiday atmosphere filled the aisles. Christmas trees twinkled, holiday music played softly. Nobody paid attention to the slouching teen as he got on the elevator in the Von Maur department store and rode it to Level 3. He came out with his gun raised: an effeminate-looking, almost pretty boy with alabaster skin and cherry-red lips, holding the rifle like a pro — stock to cheek, elbow high. Harry Potter with an AK-47. He crossed the hall to the girls 7-16 section, where, among the rows of dresses and frilly tops, he came across two women and shot and killed them both. The high-decibel blasts ricocheted through the store and sent the remaining shoppers into a panicky, screaming dash for cover, and as they ran, crying out in confusion, the teen squeezed off two more rounds, hitting the arm of a man lunging into a side door — then aiming at a man fleeing down an escalator, killing him before he reached the last step. The boy leaned over a balcony overlooking a central atrium, squinted down 40 feet to Level 1, where a janitor was scrambling to find a safe zone, and shot and killed him. Swiveling back to Level 3, he saw a woman ducking into an employee locker room, and he shot and killed her.

In the midst of the carnage, the boy changed magazines, loading in 30 fresh bullets. He walked over to the customer-service counter, behind which four workers were huddled. One of them, Dianne Trent, 53, had hastily called 911 and was describing a “young boy with glasses” coming toward her when the teen shot her at point-blank range, killing her instantly. He then shot the remaining three people behind the counter, wounding a man and two women. They collapsed in a squirming, bloody tangle. Then he turned around and shot and killed a 65-year-old man hiding behind a chair with his wife.

Barely five minutes had passed since the boy started shooting. Seven were now slain, four more badly wounded, bleeding into the thick-pile carpet. Behind the customer-service counter, one of the boy’s victims was crying out, “I need oxygen, I need oxygen.” She bled to death before help arrived. Police and ambulance sirens could now be heard approaching from the distance. The teen shot a stuffed teddy bear. Then he turned the gun on himself: one shot, under the chin.

This is the opening to an article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. It re-examines the life that a young killer had, and explores the environment he grew up in. There are several parts in the article that really hit home and show what this kid had to deal with growing up.

Infants are imitative: They learn by copying what they see. And by the time he was four years old, Rob had grown into an attack machine. He was a menace on the playground, punching other kids or kicking them in the groin whenever he got upset. When teachers disciplined him, he bit their hands. And he held grudges; he once came up to a teacher he disliked and slammed her head in a door. He did this when he was a preschooler, only three and a half feet tall and 34 pounds.

In 1992, after Ronald was posted to an Air Force base in Omaha, he brought his four-year-old son to the Methodist Richard Young Hospital and asked the psychiatrists what to do with the violent boy. The doctors asked Robbie why he kept hurting other kids. He lowered his eyes to the floor.

“Because I’m stupid and bad,” he mumbled.

This kid grew up in an extremely unhealthy, abusive environement. It deeply saddens me to see such violent tendencies in a child so young.

Growing up on a steady diet of psychiatric medication and corporal punishment, Rob became more violent and withdrawn. When he was 13, his ongoing battle with Candace went nuclear. She searched his backpack for cigarettes, and Rob flipped out on her. In response, she slapped him across the face so hard that her ring cut his forehead. He balled up his fist and said quietly, “I’m going to kill you.”

Rob’s step-mother and father wanted nothing to do with him. They did not want to have to face the byproduct of the environment they created for their son. They wanted him gone. In a brisk 8-minute long court session, they were able to get Rob sent off to foster care. He spent a lot of his time there, undergoing therapy and observation. He became very close with his room mate, Dallas.

One day, when Dallas turned 17, Rob was given permission to go to a dollar store, where he got heaps of candy and all the soda bottles he could carry. That night, he invited the other patients on his hall over and threw Dallas a surprise birthday party. It touched his friend deeply. “Rob could be great when he loved you,” Dallas says.

This really hits me hard, as even though the kid has had such an awful, abusive life, there’s obviously still someone in there that’s loving and caring. Someone that can come out and display themselves when they feel safe.

The two worked the system to the point that the staff allowed them to have guitars and video games in their room, just like regular kids, and to stay up late playing chess and drawing and talking. It was during these late-night bull sessions that Rob admitted to Dallas that he missed his mother terribly. “He talked about her a lot,” Dallas recalls. “He wanted to be with her.”

After a while, Rob deeply wanted to connect with his biological mother.

It was around that time that Rob, who now had access to a telephone after years in group homes, finally connected with his mother. One day, after convincing his sister to give him the number, he picked up the phone and called his stepfather.

“Do you remember someone named Robert Hawkins?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” his stepfather said. Then he handed the phone to Molly, who was over for a visit. She didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of the line.

“Mommy, it’s me, Robbie.”

His own mother didn’t recognize his voice. What does that say? However, after this she jumped back into his life. Things went great for a while, and she offered encouragement. She bought him a green jeep and said that if he finished high school, he would get it. After a while, Rob wanted to move back home. His own mother rejected him, feeling that it would still be unsafe for her new family. Rob still got in trouble with the law too often for her liking. She wanted to be the fun aunt, not a mother. This rejection crushed Rob.

For a second time in his life, Rob had been rejected by his own mother. He was so angry that he didn’t speak to her for two years.

Four years cocooned in the state system had left him with little education and no marketable talents, and he lacked even basic life skills — such as knowing how to drive a car. Still, he wasn’t stupid, and he was willing to learn.

But he soon discovered that Nebraska had become an unforgiving place for kids like him. Globalization and mechanization had winnowed away the decent jobs working in corn and soybeans, and by the time Rob went looking for work, there were 20,000 fewer farm jobs in Nebraska than there had been when he was born. The loss left an entire generation out in the cold — some 10,000 high school dropouts in the state are currently unemployed, roaming the plains with nothing to do. After looking for a while with no success, Rob gave up the job hunt. He started bumming around in a haze of marijuana smoke, got busted and was put under house arrest. Eventually, he persuaded the judge to release him from the state’s supervision. The county prosecutor argued against it, but by then the state had already spent $265,000 on Rob, and, as his caseworker put it, “I’m not sure that we’re benefiting him anymore.”

The kid was stuck in homes and wasn’t forced to get an education. He still felt that he could contribute to society. This was what convinced them to let him leave care. They didn’t feel that with his mental state, anything they would do would help him. He gets out in the real world, and realizes that without an education, without the skills of living in the real world, he can’t get a job. What jobs he did get he wasn’t able to keep, which is his fault.

Everything Rob tried to do to make money failed miserably. Whenever he looked for jobs online, all he could find were minimum-wage gigs — nothing with a future. He enlisted in the Army, announcing to his friends one night that he was going to make it to general, but the recruiter rejected him on account of his record and mental-health issues. Spiraling down into depression and drinking, he tried drug dealing in earnest. He borrowed $400 worth of pot in what was supposed to be his big move, but he ended up smoking it all. “It was just so moist,” he told a friend with a laugh.

This kid is going downhill. He can’t get anything more than minimum wage, can’t even serve his country, and heck, he can’t even deal drugs right. The kid is living a meaningless existence. He isn’t contributing to anything, and he constantly feels like an underachieving throwaway.

Even Dallas, his friend from the group home who had managed to get a job at Target and a fiancee, couldn’t convince Rob to straighten up. “There was a side of Rob that didn’t want to go the quiet route,” Dallas recalls. “He was getting pretty heavy into his drugs. He wanted to deal like crazy for a few years and then retire.” But when Rob tried a second stab at dealing, plunking all his cash into a cocaine buy, he ended up getting robbed, losing every gram and every dollar he had invested. “He came over to my house and was really upset,” says Dallas. “He cried a lot. He owed some pretty serious people money, and he wanted to kill himself.”

…he sat down and wrote another suicide note.

“I’ve been a piece of shit my entire life,” he wrote. “It seems this is my only option. I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster, but please understand that I just don’t want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life. I just want to take a few pieces of shit with me.”

Rob left the note next to his bed and drove over to see his friend Dallas. When he arrived, he slumped down on the big leather couch, flicked on the Xbox and began to play in wordless concentration. But before long, he tossed the controller on the couch and started talking, then crying.

Tears ran down his face. Everything was wrong — everything. The Marucas were going to kick him out and he’d be homeless. He’d fucked up with Kaci, the one girl he could see marrying. She hated him, and maybe rightly so. He was looking at jail time — over Christmas — for drinking beer in the Jeep, and he didn’t even have the money to pay the fine, let alone a lawyer.

When his mother found out about the gun, she was likely to take back the Jeep, and then how the hell was he going to get around? Where was he going to sleep? What were they going to do to him in prison? Through tear-stained eyes, he looked up at his old friend. “I’m fucked, dude.”

This deeply saddens me. Here is a kid who’s been battling depression his whole life, lived in abusive relationships, been abandoned multiple times by the only people who are supposed to always be there for him, and he’s got absolutely nothing to look forward to. Putting myself in his shoes, I can completely understand why he would think that absolutely everything in life was heading into a pit he couldn’t get out of. Molly (his mother), was trying to find him, as she had noticed he had taken an AK-47 from her home.

As she raced to find her son, Molly looked down at her cellphone and noticed that there was a missed call. When she pressed the phone to her ear, she heard Rob’s high-pitched, reedy voice.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. “It’s me. I just wanted to let you know that I love you. I’m sorry for everything. See you later.”

His last words to his mother.

Now, I don’t want to seem too empathetic to this kid. What he did was completely disgusting. There are absolutely no circumstances where what this person did could be deemed reasonable. However, I am deeply moved by somebody willing to look into this kid’s life, and why anyone would do such a thing. I feel for this guy. I hate that anybody has to live the life that he lived. I hate that people could be so abusive and dismissive of their own children. I hate that love could be so absent from somebody’s life. I hate almost everything that this kid had to endure. I hate, most of all, that when he showed signs of caring, of kindness, of being a normal person, that nobody seemed to latch onto that and encourage it and nurture it. Not even the people who were supposed to be taking care of him.

Never before have I felt so empathetic towards, yet so appalled at, a single individual. I hate what this person did, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel pity and empathy towards someone who had such a deficient upbringing. This story has deeply moved me. I’m not sure in what way, or to what conclusion, but it has made me think. I know I feel bad for Rob. I can’t imagine living a childhood like his. It doesn’t justify his actions, though. *sigh* I’ll definitely ponder this one a lot more. A lot more.

I highly recommend you read the full article. It’ll take you probably a little over a half hour, and it’s a really interesting read. You can find it at Rolling Stone.

This is a question I often find myself asking.

I work a job that does not offer me regular days off. In fact, erratic would not even describe my working schedule as of late. This makes many things in life hard, especially when it comes to faith.

I ask myself, what does the Church provide that makes it so fundamental to a Christian life? First to my mind is that it provides community. A central gathering place for people of the same faith. A place to commune in God’s name and celebrate. A place to worship. A place to learn.

However, I have often found myself surrounded by people of the same faith, eager to discuss and explore our beliefs. And to some degree, I find this to be more helpful than what the Church provides. To use an analogy, a Sunday service is elementary school, whereas a bible study with a healthy discussion is University. In a Church service, you are presented with facts and opinions on a topic. You can either take them as they are, explore them after the service, or reject them. In early education, we are presented with facts. “Simple” problems wherein the solution is a straight line A -> B. If we consider topics presented to us in University, they are very rarely a straight line solution. They must be explored. They must be stretched and poked and prodded and turned upside down. They must be wrestled with. They must be struggled with. A bible study wherein discussion is an equal part of the equation provides the ability to prod God’s word. To turn it about, to stretch it, to wrestle with it. To struggle with it. And most of all, to do it with people who are going through the exact same thing as you. God doesn’t call us on cheating if we work together to try to understand something he’s said.

So, if I find myself in a community outside of the Church that shares belief in God’s Word and isn’t afraid to discuss it or explore avenues such as music, books, and discussion to learn more about it, is the Church still relevant?

I had written the above bit just before I started my last set of shifts, which was the beginning of missing several weeks Church. I never got around to hitting the publish button. I’ve been mulling around with this notion, and I’ve been able to develop my thoughts on the subject a little.

Provided you find a healthy community you can be in outside of the Church, I don’t feel that the Church is essential to the growth of a person’s faith; and I can think of instances in my life where the Church has been limiting in the development of my faith.

I do, however, find immeasurable value in the rituals and sacraments that the Church provides. Primarily, communion. I never really understood communion until recently. I think that the concept and meaning of it is nigh impossible for a child to understand. But it has become one of the most powerful parts of the service for me. I no longer view it as the thing that happens that means “Good, it’s just about over.” It’s the culmination of a celebration. It is The point of the whole thing.

I don’t want to seem that I’m eager to dismiss the Church, as a place or as an institution. I’m sure there is more to it than just offering sacraments. And by all means, for those without a strong faith community outside the Church it is and should be a focus point.

I guess if there’s one thing that I’ve decided while mulling about all this, it’s that people should be less afraid to explore their faith outside of the Church. It’s safety is alluring, but you can learn so much more by getting out there and talking to people and exposing yourself to new ideas that challenge your beliefs. It provokes the growth that results in a solid, grounded, healthy faith. We, as Christians, are called to be in the World, and oft we can forget that. To paraphrase Rob Bell, my desire would be for Christians that we develop a faith like a trampoline: one that can be jumped on pushed and retain it’s structure. We should do what we can to avoid “Brickianity,” and making out faith fit into an extremely narrow point of view that, if challenged, may result in the entire thing falling apart.

I know this is a little disconnected, but that’s how my brain works. That’s all for now.

This is a question I wrestle with often. I, like many others, have this fabricated image of an old man with a big white beard and flowing white robes ingrained in my head. But that’s not what I mean.

My perception of God’s image is not the who I wrestle with.

Who? That question always leads me to “What?”s. “Who is God?” leads me to questions like What is God’s relationship to me? What is my relationship to God? What will God do for me? What should I do for God?

Last night at St. Benedict’s Table, a song was sung with a very powerful image painted through it’s lyrics. The chorus repeated the line

I am coming for you.
I am coming for you.
You will see me in this town someday.

These lyrics paint a powerful image; a “who” of God being one who is desperate to get to us, desperate to find us, desperate for us. These lyrics invoke in me images of God fighting through obstacles; everything of the world trying to hold Him back.

But they won’t stop Him. No. These lyrics show me God as someone who is not going to give up. He will let nothing get in the way of His relationship with us.

I have many “Who”s of God swirling around in my head, but this “Who” painted by the song is one of my favorites. I am so desperate to be in relationship with Him, but I’m human. I have flaws. I sin. I stumble. I fail. I give up. I lose sight of what’s important. But I try. I try my hardest. To think that God is as desperate to be in a relationship with me as I am with Him is extremely comforting. It is encouraging. It is strengthening. It is a shield, a defense. It is joyous.

I don’t think it’s bad that I struggle with who I think God is. I think it’s healthy. I think it’s what helps me grow in my faith. I hope to struggle with Him in years to come. I hope to struggle with my faith. And in doing so, I hope that my faith will become an integral part of my being. I hope that through my struggles, who God is becomes a central part to who I am. And I hope that if who God is can become an part of who I am, I can help to show others who God is, and what God’s love is like. That’s all I really want in the end, to experience and share God’s love, his passion, his devotion to us, with others.

I’ve decided that I want to keep recording some of my deeper thoughts. Y’know, views on life, relationships, God. . .all those things! However, Tumblr isn’t the best for lengthy posts. So I’ll do it here. These will show up truncated with a link on Tumblr, so you don’t have to do anything. But I think this is the best solution. We’ll see how it works.

Well, newer, sleeker, and more functional (for my needs) sites have popped up and I’m moving my blog once more.  Update your bookmarks to:

http://buffaloseven.tumblr.com

It allows for much more streamlined posting of videos and pictures, while giving simpler control for various text formatting.  It’s a great new site, and it’s ease of use will definitely result in more updates!

I’ve been away on business and trying to figure out how such a simple move could become so complicated.

I’ll get back to regular posting when I’ve finally moved to Winnipeg, which should be in a couple weeks.  If I have the time, I’ll throw some sporadic posts your way in the interim.

Sorry guys!