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prodigal_me
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Name: Ryan
Location: Abilene, Texas, United States
Birthday: 6/24/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: theology
hebrew
china
the emerging church (still as an observer)
social justice
cigars
birds
Expertise: mediocrity
Occupation: Student
Industry: Theology
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  littleman184
Member Since:
3/29/2004
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| Hahahaha. This whole Xanga thing is absurd, man. You know what else is absurd? Being wide awake at 6:00 in the morning for no apparent reason whatsoever on the one day I don't have class. Realizing that it was going to be one of those days that Universe decides to serve up an extra helping of absurdity, my initial response was naturally, "I should post on Xanga for the first time in a year."
So to sum up my experiences over the last eleven months or so: I moved into a house in the summer, continued with academic studies, continued down that road of asking questions and experience doubt, read some books, had some conversations, met some people, moved to london, read more books, met more people, etc. Nothing of any great consequence.
You know, looking back at some of my previous posts and conversations on here makes me think about consciousness and the self. I've been reading some about it. There has been a lot of research done lately in the area of consciousness, and many people are concluding that the idea of self, of a continually conscious being, is an illusion. Bundle theorists claim that consciousness is simply a combination of sensations connected by experiences. The self, then, appears to be continuous, these experience seem to belong to "me," but in actuality "I" do not exist as I did. It's an interesting thought, to think that the self is an illusion. At first I rejected it. Now I just don't really care, because there's really nothing I can do about it. But it is interesting when reflecting on past experiences to think that I did not exist in those experiences as I do now. | | |
| May Term classes really, really suck.
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| There is this thing that happens every year in the dorm about this time of year. It starts to warm up, and residents want to cool thier room. Anderson dorm has a very outdated AC unit, and it costs too much to turn it on and off when needed, so they turn it on once a year. They want to wait and make sure all the cold weather is over for they year before they turn it on in the spring. So it is always hot in our room, and one often wakes up sweaty and unhappy. People often complain about it to the dorm director so that we can get it turned on sooner, but they never hear us out.
However, this year they listened to our complaint and turned it on a couple weeks ago...which would be awesome if it wasn't thirty freakin degrees outside. Now, our room (being a corner and having twice the windows of a normal Anderson room) is colder than it is outside and I am writing this post wearing layers upon layers.
All this to say, I'm ready to move.
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| In Evangelical Christianity, the Gospel is the essential message. However, there is rarely a summation or a clear definition of what exactly the Gospel entails or how it should/can be told. Many evangelical Christians prefer to use the Roman Road (Romans 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, 10:13, 10:9-10) to biblically sum up the message of the Gospel, the Good News of Christ. Others say that the four written gospels in the New Testament are the Gospel in its purest form. Other say Scripture as a whole, others this passage, others that book of the Bible.
The only problem with considering these different Scripture as the Gospel is that it limits the Gospel to written form, it makes the Gospel into a text. Scripture is probably the best tool evangelicals (and any westerner) has to understand and communicate the Gospel, but it cannot be the only one.
Many ministers go into different people groups all over the world to learn and live the culture with the hope of introducing the culture to Jesus. Many of these people groups either have no available Bible in their own written language, or have no written language at all. What then? If the Gospel is a text, if it is a book, then how do you teach people all they need to be practicing Christians?
There is a message behind the texts, which I think is the Gospel itself. It is the message from God that says "I love you." The Gospel, summed up in simple words is, I believe, that God loves us, and that to tell us He sent Jesus who died and lived again in order to love us more intimately. And that we are able to love God and love others by learning from God what it means to truly love. This is, I believe, the essential Gospel as communicated in the Scripture.
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| The more i learn and study, the more i read and devote myself to studying the true character of God revealed in Scripture, the less i find i truley know about anything at all...'tis a Glorious endeavor!
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