Leftist Christian

Somewhere back in time, I registered on a site called OK Cupid. Not much has happened there, but out of the blue, an Indian young lady started talking to me there. This was intriguing to me. She immediately wanted to talk on the phone, so we did. Then she suggested meeting up. I had no idea what to do. I noticed that there was an arboretum by where she lives, so I mentioned that. As I was starting out to meet her, she called to say that she had a meeting and that we should meet up in a neighboring city's downtown instead. Okay, except that I know nothing about that city. I browsed in a Barnes and Noble until she showed up. She was more attractive than some pictures of her let on. We sat along the lake (I guess), where ducks and geese swam. She was a vegetarian but insisted that it was okay for me to eat meat--I'm not the biggest carnivore, so I had decided I would eat vegetarian as well. We went to a Mongolian grill (I think it was called that). The conversation w...

Friday - Walking around, walking around. Nothing much caught my attention until Battles. They are generally instrumental except for a couple of songs where the guest vocalists' heads appeared in stereo on video screens. Thurston Moore played with a band that is not Sonic Youth. There was a harp player, and though Joanna Newsom is my only point of reference, she was no Joanna Newsom. Frankly, Thurston was boring and I wished I were watching Curren$y instead, but my friend is more a sucka for established rock acts. Das Racist didn't do a single thing for me either, but my first great moment was watching James Blake. This would turn out as a better way to make dance music come alive than DJ Shadow. The first night closed with Animal Collective, who, except for one song, played all new songs that struck a balance between the tunefulness of Merriweather Post Pavilion and the dissonance of their other work. Saturday - Julianna Barwick is the worst version of Enya. Woods was...

This is a general post. It's late at night, and I wish I had some ice cream. Maybe tomorrow. On Monday, I rode the train to Chicago to see Low at Millennium Park. Immediately after I boarded the train, I discovered that my phone battery was completely dead. This meant that I couldn't contact my friend, who is blind and was supposed to meet me there. I covered placed where he might be twice to no avail (including walking from the field back to the train station). Finally, I sat in the back row of seats, looking around as often as I could. Man, did the first act annoy me. He is some Irish gentleman from some romance movie that tied in music. So song after song was about luv, except that he played one Van Morrison cover (I love Van Morrison; this guy shouldn't have tried). I noticed young women all around me, all clapping enthusiastically after every song. I also noticed a few stretching out an Irish flag. Blech. Then Low started, really slow... The first time I ...

*Placekeeper post to tell me I need to write a new post, maybe a new Bible School Chronicles (okay, maybe some religion). It's summer; I might be going downtown to see Terrence Malick's Tree of Life .--aaand I still haven't gotten around to writing this post. But I did see Tree of Life , and it is very interesting. Set me off into looking into other Malick films.

I will be glad when I am through II Chronicles. Such a considerable portion of what I've been going through lately has been recording history of wars and kings' rule. So many portions are phrased in exactly the same way. Most often, the record is that a particular leader did not please God, usually because he let idols to other gods stand and/or worshiped them himself. David is one of a handful of exceptions. He was a man of war, it to me he seems a womanizer, but many times he is depicted as trying to act rightly despite some of his subjects or those around him acting outside of God's will (through killing someone or trying to kill him). Something humorous that is repeated over and over is to the effect of, "As to the rest of King _____'s reign, is it not recorded in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Israel?" I respond to this immediately with, "I don't know," and then by wondering, what has become of this book? Was it decided that ...

He has to be, right? I'm about through the Pentateuch, and I'm bothered by the sanctioning of war, in particular. This probably set a terrible precedent for the times throughout history that countries have sought to build empires in the name of God (happened really recently). Would God sanction war? He might, knowing all, with somehow every person killed being deserving. And that is how it typically goes: the Israelites are ordered to kill every last person as they enter a land. Of course, one problematic pronouncement concerning this is the commandment "Thou shall not kill." This would seem a moral law that would issue from a good God. So then what of the sanctioned killings? I know that not all are outright against war. After having seen a few films showing the collateral damage of bombings (children and other civilians burned and/or with missing limbs), the farthest I am willing to go is that it is justified when a group attacks one's land. That is ge...

In reading through (listening to) the Bible (I'm three books in), a few things have occurred to me: - It's allegorical. I've for a while had the feeling that the Book of Job could not be literal--God sort of making a bet with the devil. In reading such things as the creation account and Abraham's sacrifice (widely and correctly viewed as a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice), it occurred to me that these things are understandably figurative as well, I think. I mean, I'm okay if they are. Things were created, maybe across epochs. Doesn't have to be days. I think it could be true that man is made of the same stuff as the rest of nature. But you know, the tempting of Eve... One can see places where pains are taken to detail something's historicity--these we can take as literal. Of course, it's this or it's man's account of his experience, divinely sanctioned. - This must show our evolution. Right now I'm in the middle of lengthy d...

Who would I kid to pretend I would read the Bible in a year? (I hate new year's resolutions anyway.) So I got this idea to download an audio version and make it what I listen to as I drive around. Usually I am listening to the political station and music on commercial breaks. First off, I only have the Pentateuch lined up, and it's already ten CDs. I want to be open-minded as I "read" it. I want to see whether it is saying something more radical than contemporary Christianity would attribute to it. I also have skepticism in my wondering, what if I don't like what I encounter? What if it just seems like a mythology like any other? What if it presents a brutal or illogical God? Of course, God could be real and be unlikeable, but then I have to weed out what is the culture of the time of writing. Anyway, the central topic here is the despair that I feel when I look at the modern world, and that is not primarily for the same reasons that fellow Christians mi...