It's been too long...

It's been a while since I've posted. I don't know if anyone even reads this!

However, the main reason I created this blog was to give me incentive to find a church. As its name suggests, I'm the sort of person many Christians would call "backslidden", and I'd like to find my way back into the Church.

Well, some things have changed since I last blogged. First, I'm attending a weekly book study. Unfortunately, I don't have the name of the book with me; the books haven't arrived yet, so we've been working off of photocopies. However, I can honestly say it's the first Bible / book study I've actually wanted to attend for the content! Each week's reading is an excerpt (of several pages) from some famous theologian's writings. So far we've touched on C.S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards, and talked about attempts to be "good" and religious affections.

In addition, I've moved into the city. Not the city, mind you, but I'm within bussing distance of the downtown core. I'm hoping that getting out of suburbia may help me find a more like-minded church community. (Anyone know any good churches in Vancouver?)

Finally, I've started to connect with some Christians here at school. They're not as bad as I generalized them to be. :D

The Sorting Hat

I'm
a Ravenclaw!

Joy at Work

I've been struggling with work lately. The past few weeks I have had to put in 10-hour days and 6.5-day weeks to keep up, and it is exhausting. Today I had to get away from my desk to hear myself think, so I drove down to the local bookstore and perused for an hour. Finally I stumbled across a book, Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job.

The author is the co-founder of AES, a principle-driven energy company which by 2002, operated in 31 countries and had $8.6 billion in revenue. He's also an evangelical Christian.

The book is hardly a theological treatise (it is written for a secular audience), but he teases apart some conceptions of business that are at odds with both his faith and, he believes, our humanity. With an efficiency-driven world in mind, he quotes Oxford professor John Kay: "There is a real difference between saying to your workers, 'We care about your welfare because we do,' and saying, 'We care about your welfare because that will make you work harder for us." He insists on the permanence of moral principles (though he also insists that our understanding of those principles can become clearer over time). And he connects the raison-d'être of the corporation with stewardship, "a concept that assumes the resources we are using belong to someone else."

I'm only on Chapter 1, but I think I'm becoming more keenly aware of the "principalities and powers" often at work in the business world. Our obsession with efficiency is dehumanizing. We become cogs in a bigger wheel called The Economy, means to an end. This can't be what God intended for us.

Bakke will be hard-pressed to show how such a business can survive in a cutthroat world. His first chapter already hints at some of the difficulties they faced when they went public. Nor will he probably go far enough in dethroning capitalism. But perhaps he will have some interesting ideas on how to survive in a godless world.

Book: Luke for Everyone

One of my biggest frustrations with trying to read scripture has been its opacity. I just can't seem to get beyond the superficial and the obvious. (I wonder if that's why excessively literal approaches have often had appeal for me.)

Now, I'm not a bad reader. At one point I thought about being an English major. I can unravel themes and pick out subtleties in literature, especially when it's written in more recent English. But scripture has always seemed so impenetrable. Maybe it's for this reason that I'm loving Luke for Everyone so much. Tom Wright brings his historical scholarship to bear on the Gospel of Luke, filling in the gaps for people like me.

For instance, the Augustus Caesar in Luke 2 is the adopted son of Julius Caesar. After his death, Augustus declared his father was divine, and styled himself as "son of God." In that context, Jesus' claims not only connect him with Jewish scriptures but also pit him against worldly claims to authority:

The birth of this little boy is the beginning of a confrontation between the kingdom of God -- in all its apparent weakness, insignificance and vulnerability -- and the kingdoms of the world.

For once, I'm excited at the possibility that scripture might have so many layers for me to wade in.

Found a church

I'm thinking about settling at a Baptist church downtown.

It's funny. I used to feel like I was always more conservative than the churches I attended. Now I feel more liberal. Some of that comes with growing up, I suppose, but there's a tinge of irony there too.

The church is conservative and Calvinist. The worship is blended and I look forward to the hymns (IMHO, praise music can be anemic sometimes). The preaching, though, is in a similar vein to John Piper's: very warm, passionate, intelligent, thought-provoking. He's not likely to drop the names of anyone on my bookshelf any time soon, but I think that's ok with me.

I'm also realising that church isn't first and foremost an intellectually-oriented community. I can worship with these people and share in their hopes and prayers and fears, and that's most important. And I'm sure they will help keep me grounded, as I do tend to wander.