review of blog-entries (procrastination)

Blogging's great for someone in their teens through to their twenties. -not that it isn't for older and younger too, but it definitely is for someone my age. I just re-read a heap of my old entries from '04 when I was in high school and its a great catalyst to get the memories going.

I was at an entirely different place then in all aspects of life: faith, relations, family. (no, not economically.. sigh) So kids out there: get a blog and start writing!

I've got exams coming up - hard ones too: oral greek, oral philosophy and an assignment in new testament. So naturally, I can't pull myself away from my computer here at home. Oh, to those who haven't found out, I've started putting my songs up on myspace! Please do comment 'cos its really hard to be objective about one's own songs. Link is:
www.myspace.com/ivansaaby

Okay okay, I'll go study now. Maybe breakfast first but then study! Tonight I'm hanging out with some of the guys from college who're great. One of them got married Saturday so we're going to his new place to hang out and watch Champions' League.

..this is just ramble, yes. I haven't written here for so long that I've lost the mojo. I'll start again now, tho.

religious pluralism

I don't know what to make of religious pluralism. Really, I debate this often with myself and deliberatly shy away when the subject is raised by self-proclaimed non-religious people, who ask if I don't think 'we all are looking at different doors to the same room.'

But tonight I watched a show by an outstandingly sharp and witty, Danish journalist, Clemen Kjærsgaard, with Desmond Tutu, nobel peace-prize winner and archbishop (I think?) of South Africa. Initially I was alarmed when he employed the elephant-metaphor (blind men touching an elephant, one saying that an elephant is comparable to a snake because he is holding the tail, the other saying that the elephant is rather like a tree because he is touching a leg) and my inner alarmbells were screaming 'pluralism'.

I don't know if it is me or the emphasis of my childhood church, but I've grown up thinking in terms of right and wrong decisions, thoughts and yes, faiths, that Moslems don't have the right faith, Jews have some of the right faith but aren't redeemed because they are missing the new covenant (Jesus) and Buddhists don't even have a faith but some truth-wise inconsequential philosophy. It's 'us and them' and it's about getting 'them' onto 'our' side.

So here's Desmond Tutu blowing my socks off saying that God is more interested in people willingly going to hell than being forced into heaven! But I think he has a point when he says Truth in plural.

If God is good and good is God (which I do believe), then people are learning about God when they are learning good. Also with love. There is no religion who can contain all the Truth about God and so I should be able to accept the truths in Islam and Buddhism without it being subvertive to my faith about God revealed through Jesus. God is revealed in all things good.

This is pretty controversial to many and the implications of this thinking can be massive. So what's your take on this?

recording sessions

I recorded my first song tonight. I'm in Copenhagen staying at a childhood friend of mine and some guys from his band, campsite, and one of them's got some recording equipment. It wasn't the best of my songs (due to technical problems) but then I can't complain. When its done (and I'm happy) I'll put it up on myspace - just to have something out. Please, if you can and feel like it, feedback on it. [smile]

We should get around to recording some other ones. I think I'm gonna start doing more about my music - just to try it out and see how far it'll go!

haughty solution - another of life's great problems

When I started studying theology at the university many warned me that it was going to be a great challenge for my personal faith in God as the Creator and Lord of all, Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah and the Holy Spirit as God's Spirit, relevant to us in the spiritual and physical world.

But I do not see that it should be a challenge. The entire university has as it's aim to be strictly scientific in it's approach and as such there is a basic difference between the "knowledge of God" ["theology"] and actually knowing God. In my world there should be a constant, underlying rule that seperates fact and faith, as 'faith' per definition is a non-factual sphere of life and science is per se void of faith as it builds on scepticism; faith and scepticisme being opposites.

With this in mind it does not give me sleepless nights when I learn that for example modern science is quite certain that the city of Jericho (that Joshua and the rest of Israel marched around for seven days whereupon the walls collapsed) had not existed even close to the time when the Israelites allegedly were coming out of the desert, that a vast part of the Old Testament was probably written or at least radically edited under the exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC or that evolution seems more probable than creation. Is this supposed to rock my faith in God? No, because my faith in God does not rest upon how factual the Old or New Testament is or any such thing, for this would not be 'faith' but rather pseudo-science.

I believe that the proof of the saving and transforming power of Christ, the still mercy and grace of God and the furious violence of the same is personal. It must be not just be experienced, but known in the core of our being and consciousness; an area where fact, probabilities and scientific method lose relevance, for this is where only we individually and God can go.

broken

I've spent my early youth trying to mend my brokenness or at least evade it, to abate sinful acts. Now I am spending my late youth coming to terms with it. In preparation for dedication, commitment - yes, love in all aspects of my life - in spite of my brokenness.

Writing those two sentences is hard for me, for it represents my abandoning of youthful optimism in favour of tired realization of my own fall, my own commonness.
"But I've seen your flag on the marble arch and love is not a victory march, its a cold and its a broken Hallelujah."

In this lieu, life consists of brokenness and distractions from it.

Speak to me of brokenness and speak to me of the Ressurection. For I see now, that victory will not come from myself; only through an external force making me whole, but I haven't yet come this far in the process.

our responsibility

Contrary to logic about any absolute, I find that people calculate the possiblitiy of faith being possible and valid as a lifestyle on the evidence of people around them who impersonate faith. Problem is that they seem to think that faith should be impersonated by anyone who professes to believe. And so personal failures by the professing believers have not only consequence to themselves but to these calculating spectators who seek confirmation that a lifestyle of faith is not possible or plausible, seeking it to confirm themselves that their own egocentric lifestyles are indeed 'good'.
Confirms Matt 5:13: "You are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses it power.."
I don't like it. Don't like the responsiblity.

on this

Truth is not subjective. And with truth, ethics and moral. It follows that we must not blame any lack of truth and ethics on our part on our circumstances with the excuse that we are products of our influences. We must not reduce ourselves to fortuitious links in the chain of cause and effect, indulging in the emotional pleasure of self-justification; no matter the greatness of spirit this may require of us.

Rather we must find ourselves on our knees in humble awareness of the fallenness of mankind and with this, the fallenness of our collective and individual world.

I was young and something that was mine had been stolen by force and so I went to my dad, the protector of my cosmos, sobbing with fury and indignation and explained to him the violation to which I had fallen victim. It was and still is unfair when all he said was, "Ivan, you need to be broken." But years later it taught me a lesson, that unfairness is to be expected; that being adamant about my rights is not the Way.

So I must lay down my rights and instil my heart on love for my fellow people and hope for the continual victory of what still is Timeless and True Good.

For I am part of a story, a tale that was before me and that will be long after my passing. I must not look to the short-term but rather look to steer with all I can the world onto the course of this Timeless and True Good. Partly and simply, in honour and reverence of those who've gone before, in remembrance us who are now and in love for those yet to come.

a thought of africa

Hearing the list of the names of the dead,
hearing without understanding
the number of the score of victims
robbed of their rightful peace
their freedom
must in no way diminish
our love for each and every
of their beautiful souls.

Neither must we let
our own souls be killed.

Must we not spend our freedom
that they may have theirs.