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Saturday, November 22, 2014

The problem of evil and other cheery things

Or, why you shouldn't focus on one realm of theology at the expense of the others.
 
In keeping with what has become the confessional nature of this blog, there are two things I must admit to from yesterday:
  1. My mind wandered in chapel.
  2. I'm glad it did.
For a year now, the problem of evil has been randomly plaguing my mind. Depending on each person, there are some things which are easier to obey God in than others. For example, as an individual who has gone on record for thanking a cop for a license plate citation, fits of rage generally aren't my problem. But when it comes to verses like, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God," my reaction is typically: "BUT WHY DO THERE HAVE TO BE SECRET THINGS?!!??!?!" Without much more of an explanation for the reason God let evil exist than, "It's for His glory," Sarah, who operates on logic and reason, breaks down. I am my namesake.

Enter ROMANS 9.
 
At the same time, I am a good sober Calvinist. Namby pamby angst at not being included in the inside information of God's providence gets answered with "who are you, O [wo]man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it?" God, who is, well, God, has this figured out. Quit whining.
 
While all of this theology is correct, my attitude began to move in a dangerous direction. Without realizing it, my view of my relationship with God began to take on keywords such as  "stoic," 'detached," and "cold."
 
Enter CHAPEL.
 
Bad Christian alert: I don't remember what the speaker was saying. But somehow it got me thinking about all of the above. In the midst of all that, this suddenly dawned on me:
 
A detached, cold God, who arbitrarily allows evil into the world He created would not send His son into it to die an excruciating, cosmically-humiliating death in order to redeem us from said evil. He would not personally involve Himself.

And so we come back to the essence of the Gospel, and the need to daily remind ourselves of the reality of all that Christ has done for us. When you focus on God's sovereignty and meanwhile forget to dwell on His lovingkindness, you end up crying in a parking lot for an hour over the apparent meaninglessness of the crap which has happened (or that you're scared will happen) in your life*.
 
Enter SARAH, ascending SOAPBOX.
 
We rightly advocate the need for precise theology. But in doing so, we must remember that incomplete theology can be just as dangerous as the incorrect variety as well. We are not going to get by living on only half the story. God is just and God is good. He is powerful and also loving. He is Creator and Redeemer.
 
This side of eternity, we will never get a rationally-satisfying answer for the problem of evil. But the work of Christ reassures us. The words of Job, whose story essentially revolves around this problem, come to mind:
 
“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;
Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see and not another.
My heart faints within me!”
 
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*This is, of course, just an example and obviously never actually happened.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Art history shenanigans

We are now studying Byzantine Art in our class, and today we looked at this mosaic of the emperor Justinian from the church of San Vitale in Ravenna (Italy). Does anything seem unusual about this?


THE BEATLES ARE STANDING ON THE LEFT.

THE BEATLES DISCOVERED TIME TRAVEL.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

In which I contemplate my little-ness

 

So I'm supposed to be writing a paper on the American Revolution right now, but somehow I got sidetracked and found myself looking at pictures from the Hubble. The one above, "Ultra-Deep Field," apparently depicts 10,000 galaxies. 10,000 GALAXIES. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE THAT???
 
And then it hit me that the God who made THAT is so invested in my life that not only does He daily sustain it, He also died for me so that I don't end up getting what I deserve....I get infinitely better. Me, who wouldn't show up on this picture if you zoomed in a million* times, because we are looking at entire GALAXIES here. You know when you have those moments when your brain shuts down because it can't deal with the information you just threw at it? Yeah.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?
(Psalm 8:3-4)

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*I have no idea if this is true, it's just the liberal arts major talking.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Reverting back to my old ways

In which I return to the blog with this startling bit of self-awareness:
 
GOOD HEAVENS YOU WOULD HAVE MORE FUN AT A FUNERAL THAN YOU WOULD HANGING OUT WITH ME LATELY.
 
I need a party or something. The thing that tells me this is that I have no desire to have a party. It's disturbingly similar to the fabulous old homeschooling days, when I thrived on weeks with little-to-no human interaction, because books.
 
A few things on my mind which I expect nobody will care about except me. But this is my blog and I can do what I want with it and you can just stop reading if you're bored. Ahaahahaha.
  1. Being the devoted contrarian that I am, I've spent the last year or so hiding out in the Alamo of Sarah's Mind, pretending not to care about Housewife Theologian. I've always lived in horror of becoming that freakishly-domestic girl who obsesses over books on how to be a good wife as a way of dealing with her lack of husband. It's always seemed....pathetic. Anyways, despite all my best efforts, the more I read by Aimee Byrd, the more I like her. Dare I say kindred spirit? Too late, I just did. Going to have to ironically give her book a shot in the midst of all my single glory.
  2. In my literary criticism class, our final project is a paper/presentation demonstrating our own literary theory as inspired by the sources we have read. The idea is to generate a writing sample for grad school. It looks like mine is going to be some kind of synthesis of the Chicago School (think Mortimer Adler and the Great Books) and Tolstoy's What is Art? Along the way, we have to refute/interact with those who would oppose our ideas (I have no idea how we'll pull this off in just 10-pages). Anyways, this ties into some ideas for posts that I've been keeping on the backburner for quite a while now. Ever since I started college, I've been struck by the lack of attention the conservative Reformed world gives to the arts. I get why, but I think it's also a valid forum for discussion, and it's something I'd like to focus on in my own career. So I'm foreseeing some of this project appearing on the blog as I write.
  3. This one I'm kind of shocked I haven't mentioned yet: In 9 weeks, I fly out to England to study in Cambridge for the semester. Time is starting to move unsettlingly quickly. It's weird to be so close to something you've dreamed about doing for so long. What a time to be alive.