An Alternative Dictionary

Welcome to my dictionary.

hell (adj.)-- a term to describe the state of individuals who are knowingly or unknowingly engaged in the process of dehumanizing and destroying themselves and/or others. See Smith, Anna Nicole.

Smith, Anna Nicole (n.)-- an otherwise lovely woman who's life was hell.

And we all thought it was funny. Perhaps in dying she has opened our eyes to our own hellbent (as it were) ways.

I Have a New Blog

I've started another blog called This is My Brain on The Work. It's a chronicle of my experiences with The Work of Byron Katie. I did one on this blog a few days ago, but I'm going to devote those kinds of posts to the new blog. Here's the url:

http://psychorooter.blogspot.com

Challenges for Confessional Lutheranism

Christianity today is faced with many challenges, the greatest of which is the changing culture. Yesterday I was at the monthly Pastor's Conference and we heard a presentation by Dr. John Johnson, President of Concordia University, Chicago. Johnson's presentation centered on the question of being confessional Lutherans amidst these changes of epic proportion-- What should theological formation look like in our current post-modern context? There was one statement that he made that almost made me stand up and cheer (and I'm paraphrasing):

Theological formation and inquiry should connect with a person's existential needs.

Dr. Johnson said very eloquently something that I've been trying to say in my own clumsy fashion for quite some time now. It's time for the church to start addressing the ominous existential emptiness that many experience today. It will no longer do to use the Lutheran Confessions as, in the words of the late David Treumper, an electric fence to zap the masses or as a fundamentalistic litmus test of confessional integrity. It used to work back in the day when being Lutheran actually meant something to most Lutherans. Today we are reaping the results of such continued use-- the LCMS continues to decline in membership. We no longer capture the hearts of people. Our theological formation and practice doesn't connect with the existential needs of people.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, people by in large have lost their hearts. I believe this to be the greatest existential malady of our day. Not only are people disconnected from the church, they are disconnected from themselves. The church is not capturing hearts because it doesn't know how. And it will never know how as long as it continues to serve as a bridge to the 16th century. In the meantime, people will continue to flounder while scraping the bottom of dry-rotted barrels trying to find a morsel of significance or a drop of meaning. Let's not give them one more barrel to scrape.

A Good Commercial

Here's one of my all time favorite commercials. It's a 1982 ad for the Detroit Zoo. It sure beats the cruddy commercials we saw during the Super Bowl. Seriously, the only thing good about the Super Bowl this year was Prince. Anyway, enjoy!!

Democracy in the Middle East

Democracy will not work in Iraq, Iran, or any other Middle Eastern country. Here's why:

1) Democracy is a western idea. The only democracy in the Middle East is Israel because most Israelis are of European descent. Many who live in Israel today are descendants of Jewish people who fled from Nazi Germany during WW II. And even some of those who actually fled are still alive today. But they came to Israel with a western mindset and worldview.

2) Democracy is a product of the Enlightenment, which prizes and champions individual autonomy. It was purely a western phenomenon. The Middle East has not experienced movements such as the Enlightenment and Modernism. Middle Eastern cultures prize the collective. A person's identity is determined by the identity of the community, not by who he/she is or what he/she accomplishes. Exertion of any kind of individualism is taboo. Everything a person does is for the benefit of the collective, not the individual. This is why concepts such as human rights and equal opportunity are foreign to Middle Eastern people.

3) Many Middle Eastern people have noticed that western-type democracy has led to individual emptiness and meaninglessness. Middle Easterners live lives that are full of meaning and purpose because individuals are swept up in the mindset of the collective. In other words, they don't try to "make something of themselves". They are very content with who they already are.