The Balieyan Creed
I.
I believe in God - most of the time.
I believe in Jesus - most of the time.
I believe in the Holy Spirit - most of the time.
God believes in me - all of the time - at least I think God does.
II.
I believe faith is the constantly evolving state of affairs between me, God, and the community of faith.
My faith is not easily categorized.
I am a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Catholic, an Evangelical, a Charismatic, an Emergent, a Quaker, and a Liberationist.
I am not a mix and match Christian.
Not all religions say the same thing.
To believe this is intellectual laziness.
I am a Christian
Other faiths have something to teach me.
Buddhists - mediation
Muslims - the importance of prayer
Jews - a sense of history
Agnostics - a sense of honesty
I am a Christian
My faith has something to teach others.
III.
I don't always get God.
God always pursues me.
I don't always believe in God.
God always pursues me.
I have moments of supernatural clarity.
I have moments where I feel enclosed in a coffin of doubt.
Sometimes I think
This. is. all. there. is.
God always pursues me.
I believe in absolute truth.
I don't believe I know exactly what absolute truth looks like.
I do believe that I have had glimpses of the absolute truth - and not even known it.
I believe in heaven.
I believe in hell.
I don't know with certainty who goes where.
I anticipate being surprised with who is where.
I hope I am not surprised with where I am.
IV.
I believe we are blessed so as to bless others.
I believe we are generally selfish.
I believe the love of God supersedes any national boundary.
I believe God cares more about our hearts than our politics.
I believe the church has very little grace.
I believe there is more grace in the church than anywhere else.
I believe the church has enormous potential for good - and bad.
V.
I believe endless debates about evolution are not a good use of the church's time.
I do believe feeding the hungry is a good use of the church's time.
I believe endless debates about homosexuality are not a good use of the church's time.
I do believe making disciples is a good use of the church's time.
VI.
I believe in God the father - most of the time.
VII.
I believe in the sacrificial death of Jesus - most of the time.
VII.
I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit - most of the time.
IX.
God pursues me - all of the time. - I think.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Anyone who's a trivia buff may find it useful to know that Meet the Press is network television's longest running program. It started in November of 1947 which means it has been on almost twice as long as Saturday Night Live (the cultural benchmark of my parent's generation) and more than three times longer than The Simpsons (the cultural benchmark of my generation). What attracted me to it initially was that there was nothing else on at 1:00 am on Sunday mornings. You see, when the lobby is empty, your Facebook friends have gone to bed, and the thousands of pages you read last semester in your return to college have temporarily zapped your lifelong love of reading, television becomes your refuge. So I decided to turn on the cultural benchmark of my grandparent's generation - Meet the Press.
Almost immediately I was hooked. It was so informative. The moderator actually made politicians get off their talking points. I had long ago given up on the concept that there was such a thing as a balanced and honest newscast, and here it was, the grail that the nerd in me had been searching for without even knowing it. I likely have overstated how much I like this program, but it was refreshing to watch and made me think about the news from years past. Edward R. Murrow brought down Joseph McCarthy. Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon. Walter Cronkite helped bring an end to the Vietnam War. All of this was before I was born. Today news is, as Homer Simpson would say, "infotainment".
I can't help but wonder if this change is more in the American public than the news media itself. I think most people today prefer to be entertained than informed. I've heard that the U.S. media has a liberal bias. It may (that's a debate for another day), but my belief is that the bigger bias within our media is a bias towards sensationalism. What sells? Controversy. Heated arguments. Glenn Beck. Keith Olberman. Pit two contenders in a battle where there is no middle ground, and the result is polarization. Couple this with a public whose attention spans have been zapped by too much television, too much computer time, too many video games, and you are looking at a public debate that is a cliff notes version of reality.
The most famous political debate of U.S. history might have been those between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. I've been fascinated reading excerpts from these in my Civil War and Reconstruction class. The first candidate would get up and speak for an hour, the second candidate would get up and speak for an hour and a half, then the first candidate would speak to the assembled crowd another half hour. People would sit and listen to a three hour debate where a candidate at most spoke twice! It wouldn't work today. People crave simplicity.
To prove my point: the Republican Party recently released its "Pledge to America" basically a manifesto about what is wrong with America and what steps can be taken to fix the problems. I decided today to look it up. The document is 48 pages long. 24 of these are filled with the table of contents, pictures, and section headings with just a handful of words (one example: A plan to reform Congress and restore trust). The other 24 pages are pictures and text, text alone, and pages with graphs. This is AMAZING to me. One of our two political parties has a manifesto with as many pages devoted to pictures as to text. (Though to be fair the picture of Mount Rushmore is almost as beautiful as that of the cowboy roping steers). With as much money as our political parties do on polling and understanding the psychology of the American voter, I have to believe that the reason the conservative ideas in our country are best represented by using patriotic pictures rather than lengthy textual explanations of concepts such as limited government and lower taxes, is that is what works best with to garner votes from the American people. As for what the 24 pages of text said, I don't know...
I only read the cliff notes.
Almost immediately I was hooked. It was so informative. The moderator actually made politicians get off their talking points. I had long ago given up on the concept that there was such a thing as a balanced and honest newscast, and here it was, the grail that the nerd in me had been searching for without even knowing it. I likely have overstated how much I like this program, but it was refreshing to watch and made me think about the news from years past. Edward R. Murrow brought down Joseph McCarthy. Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon. Walter Cronkite helped bring an end to the Vietnam War. All of this was before I was born. Today news is, as Homer Simpson would say, "infotainment".
I can't help but wonder if this change is more in the American public than the news media itself. I think most people today prefer to be entertained than informed. I've heard that the U.S. media has a liberal bias. It may (that's a debate for another day), but my belief is that the bigger bias within our media is a bias towards sensationalism. What sells? Controversy. Heated arguments. Glenn Beck. Keith Olberman. Pit two contenders in a battle where there is no middle ground, and the result is polarization. Couple this with a public whose attention spans have been zapped by too much television, too much computer time, too many video games, and you are looking at a public debate that is a cliff notes version of reality.
The most famous political debate of U.S. history might have been those between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. I've been fascinated reading excerpts from these in my Civil War and Reconstruction class. The first candidate would get up and speak for an hour, the second candidate would get up and speak for an hour and a half, then the first candidate would speak to the assembled crowd another half hour. People would sit and listen to a three hour debate where a candidate at most spoke twice! It wouldn't work today. People crave simplicity.
To prove my point: the Republican Party recently released its "Pledge to America" basically a manifesto about what is wrong with America and what steps can be taken to fix the problems. I decided today to look it up. The document is 48 pages long. 24 of these are filled with the table of contents, pictures, and section headings with just a handful of words (one example: A plan to reform Congress and restore trust). The other 24 pages are pictures and text, text alone, and pages with graphs. This is AMAZING to me. One of our two political parties has a manifesto with as many pages devoted to pictures as to text. (Though to be fair the picture of Mount Rushmore is almost as beautiful as that of the cowboy roping steers). With as much money as our political parties do on polling and understanding the psychology of the American voter, I have to believe that the reason the conservative ideas in our country are best represented by using patriotic pictures rather than lengthy textual explanations of concepts such as limited government and lower taxes, is that is what works best with to garner votes from the American people. As for what the 24 pages of text said, I don't know...
I only read the cliff notes.
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