only wish my name was as cool

You scored as Jürgen Moltmann. The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about. John Calvin 73% Jürgen Moltmann 73% Anselm 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 60% Martin Luther 53% Karl Barth 53% Jonathan Edwards 47% Augustine 40% Paul Tillich 33% Charles Finney 27% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

i'll stay with the fathers and sisters

lucian tapiedi (1921 - 1942)

anglican teacher/evangelist in papua new guinea
after japanese invasion during wwII, fled into the jungle with fellow priests and missionaries for protection
axed to death by hivijapa, a native orokaiva
hivijapa later converted to christianity, and took on the name lucian
built a church in embi and dedicated to the memory of lucian tapiedi


more info:
westminster abbey 20th century martyrs
church of england: 60th anniversary of the end of wwII

pakistani evangelist

esther john (1929 - 2 February 1960)

born qamar zia to a muslim family in india
converted to christianity as a teenager
hospital worker
missionary/evangelist in pakistan
brutally murdered in her bed


more info:
westminster abbey 20th century martyrs

a royal nun

grand duchess elizabeth of russia (1864 - 18 July 1918)

royal blood
member of russian nobility during the revolution
husband assasinated
sold all of her luxurious possessions and became a nun
opened the Mary and Martha home to help orphans and the poor
fostered prayer and charity among women
murdered by the bolshevicks

canonized by Russian Orthodox Church in 2001 as new-martyr elizabeth


more info:
westminster abbey 20th century martyrs
orthodox christian information center
orthodox england
orthodox america

the archbishop who stood up to a tyrant

janani luwum (1922 - 17 february 1977)

archbishop in uganda
publicly opposed the dictator idi amin
arrested
murdered (reported as car crash by government)



more info:
westminster abbey 20th century martyrs
dictionary of african christian biography
readings of the episcopal church

i shall be baptized with my own blood

manche masemola (1913-1928)

a pedi of south africa
baptismal canidate
murdered by her parents

martyr of the anglican church of southern africa


more info:
westminster abbey 20th century martyrs
dictionary of african christian biography

real heros

maximilian kolbe (1894 - 13 august 1941)

franciscan priest
prisoner in auschwitz
gave other prisoners his food
heard confessions and celebrated mass secretly in prison
gave his life as a sacrifice for a fellow prisoner

beatified as confessor in 1970
canonized as martyr in 1981


more info:
westminster abbey 20th century martyrs
saint of auschwitz
jewish virtual library

My Celebrity Look-alikes

My cool celebrity look-alike collage from MyHeritage.com. Get one for yourself.

alex gordon is my hero

subjective universality

to take a step back from my last post (the language of theology), i want to look at aesthetic judgments in general, not just from sibley's perspective.

david hume and immanuel kant were really the first ones to analyze aesthetic judgments, which they called judgments of taste.

judgments of taste come from an inner subjective aesthetic experience. this is in one sense an empirical observation. the same object may be called ugly by one person and beautiful by another, or they are just left simply confused (think jackson pollock). there seems to be as many different aesthetic opinions as there are peoples, or at least cultures.

but when a person ascribes the quality of beauty to an object there is the intention of universal application. we want others to call beautiful what we have called beautiful. there is also the example that david hume gave:

whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegence between ogilby and milton, or bunyan or addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as teneriffe, or a pond as extensive as the ocean. though there may be found persons, who give the preference to the former authors, no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd and ridiculous (hume, of the standard of taste)

the point being that who has ever heard of addison or ogilby? there seems to be a universality to the statement "milton and bunyan are aesthetically pleasing."

so how does one reconcile this subjective universality? how does one make a justified judgment of taste?


is there a subjective universality to theology?

universality is easy to admit of. yes we live in the meta-narrative of YHWH's creation, redemption, and restoration. the statement "jesus is lord" does not change to "buddha is lord" when we find ourselves in a different context.

subjectivity in theology? maybe a little tougher to swallow. we want there to be an objective truth to our theological claims. we want there to be a definite rightness or wrongness to what we believe and say about god. but i think if we are honest, our theological convictions have a lot to do with our own experiences in the world and in church (some healthy and some painful). our convictions may have more to do with what denomination we grew up in than any actual adherence to the truth.

i don't know, these are just thoughts to play with.


articles for further reading:
aesthetic judgment by nick zangwill
hume's aesthetics by ted gracyk
kant's aesthetics and teleology by hannah ginsborg

the language of theology

frank sibley in his paper "aesthetic concepts," makes the claim that aesthetic terms are fundamentally different than non-aesthetic terms. this means that any aesthetic term cannot be further explained by a non-aesthetic term. in other words there are no necessary and sufficient conditions to define an aesthetic term such as 'graceful,' 'delicate,' 'gaudy,' or even 'beautiful.' aesthetic judgments are in a sense metaphors with no truth-functionality, meaning that a particular aesthetic judgment can not be true or false. but sibley does not want to commit to complete subjectivity here, he wants to say that there cann be 'good' or 'bad' judgments. a fine line.

aesthetic judgments are much like ethical judgments. they are grouped in what are 'value' judgments. so here is my question: are theological judgments value judgments?

if the language of theology could be analyzed like the language of aesthetics, many things would change.
we may no longer feel the need to use scientific techniques to prove the validity of scripture or our religion. we may not feel the need to distinguish ourselves from other christians because they interpret a passage of scripture differently than us.

maybe we could actually find beauty in the diversity of christian thought.

here begins my rambling.

isaac, the photographer

man of faith

last year one of my professors saw me walk into class, and he exclaimed, "now there is a man of faith." he said this because of the shirt i was wearing. and no, it was not a christian t-shirt.

wearing a royals jersey in october sets you apart, even in kansas city.

why do i still believe in the royals?

- my earliest memory is watching bret saberhagen pitch in game seven of the 1985 world series.

- my sons wanted to read the 2006 royals program guide before bedtime tonight.

- being from nebraska, how can i not believe in alex gordan?

- the odds are, at least one decent pitcher will come through the ranks. maybe this year.

- maybe this year.

and so i ask, who cares if the fantasy top 100 players include a total of 0 royals?

who cares if we have to face the red sox on opening day?

who cares if you could field just about an entire all-star team of former royals now playing elsewhere?

who cares if i like powder blue?


i believe.

isaac, the photographer

my son likes to grab the camera and take about 40-some pictures.
this is my four year old's art.

happy birthday to me

so here i am at 27.

am i supposed to be having one of those quarter-life crises? it didn't even dawn on me to consider it today, but now as i think about, a crisis enters my life.

it has been just over 9 years since christ said "i love you, dave," in the middle of snow covered fields. nebraska tends to make you feel small when you drive out away from the city (not very hard to do considering there is very little city to be in). there is a vastness to the plains that makes everything look big except for you. the moon is special. that night was special. there was blue all around.

skip forward to the summer and i am at a midnight hardcore show at cornerstone in bushnell, ill. god says, "serve my church." oh crap!

i have become the principle horn player for the university of nebraska-omaha's chamber orchestra. god says, "go to new orleans; learn how to serve my church." my mom says, oh crap!

new orleans has amazing clouds. they are huge. new orleans has amazing people. rich mullins said that the best way he knew how to identify with jesus was to identify with the poor. midnights in the french quarter i listened to people. i watched a homeless man give my friend a tie, just because he wanted to do something nice for him. i watched as this same homeless man was stopped by campus security while he was walking to our bible study we held in the dorms.

on the ground staring at the night sky, god says, "not music, i've got something else for you."

what?

youth ministry?
teaching?
social justice?
pastor?
academia?
theology?
philosophy?
writing?

how many wrong decisions have i made? how many right?

to try to live in abba's embrace is what is needed.
grace.