Minus-Sign

A couple of guys from our church and the neighboring one put up a band. At first they were strikingly called Kallo (skull) but lately renamed themselves minus-sign.
It's hard-core but good as such and I'm proud of them. They've committed their art to what they've got to say, and they did a great job at the show in Kotka Youth Center a couple of months ago.

They've posted a couple of demo tracks at the website for download and listening. Besides the opening line "it's a touch job but..." in Death of Generation, I like the clean voiced vocals in The Bleeding Rose and here and there in other tracks. Great effect.

Press on, boys

Deducing from the Progressive Revelation and Illinear Salvation History

In respect to those who have never heard the gospel, I deduce from two generally agreed ideas in evangelical theology.

One of them is the progressive nature the divine revelation, which views the trajectory of God revealing himself in human comprehension being a cumulative - growing into a deeper knowledge and a more precise understanding - reaching the climax in the divine incarnation in the person of Jesus. It is widely accepted that e.g. Abraham's faith in God - a faith that was to his salvation, and Paul's faith - likewise to his salvation, are quite different in depth and systematic lay-out. Yet, both are biblically accounted as saving faith.

Another idea generally agreed upon is illinearity of the salvation history. It means that although history happens in linear sequence, where and an event follows another. Illinear view on history neglects the sequential occurrence, and rather looks at the sum of all events. (or, sort of :) ) Salvation history is widely agreed being an illinear, to grant the Old Testament believers forgiveness of sin by the death of Jesus. It is central to the evangelicalism that salvation is not apart from the cross, but that all men, throughout the world and history are saved only because Jesus took the punishment for their sin.

Now, what different is an ordinary tribal fellow from jungle somewhere in 2006 AD to a Abraham from Mesopotamia in 4000 (or whatever) BC, except that the linear history has accounted the death of Jesus to occur in around 30AD. Illinear history sums up all the ordinary fellows from all ages and places them besides the one-time-event of the death of Jesus. Furthermore, the progressive nature of revelation highlights the fact of faith over depth of philosophical system to support it. On what basis would the contemporary ignorant be asked for more than his ancient peer?

To avoid the pitfall all pluralism or simple relativism, it must be noted that the New Testament - and evangelical theology accordingly - presents salvation as following one's response to Jesus. Faith in him saves, and rejecting him results in judgment. However, the New Testament stays within the context of the ones who have heard. Only occasionally it looks beyond that, but on those we can see that there can be larger perspective to the issue. (e.g. Paul's reasoning in Romans 2)

The Gospels also present as the central task of all the followers of Jesus to proclaim the Good News about the salvation to all the world, and make all people likewise followers. But, this is not to pronounce a straightforward judgment on the ones who never got the change of hearing.

How big is your www

MBnet reports (in Finnish though) the lately statistics on use of www in Finland. The two biggest sites - mtv3.fi and msn.fi - both had nearly 800 000 visits a week of which only 128 000 visited both. The figures reveal that majority of the folks have very personal "taste" on the www.

I've done a bit of research myself over the last couple of months asking people about their habits online. It seems that most of us settle with world wide web that's 20sites wide - in total. The ordinary story is that you go online, check out the "home", click into the two favorite sites to see that there's nothing worthwhile - then there's a deep breath-out - and you go - "hmm... ...what then... ...oh, I haven't been to that site for a long time..." ...a click and there you are. That's when the most of us go back to "home", to see that it has not been updated since the last visit 5mins ago, and we go offline with a headache thinking that what's the thing with the stupid www.

So instead of the megalomaniac whole world wide www, we could as well have a couple of good sites, perhaps stored in our computer... like it would have been in the good old days when the whole town had three tv's that showed one channel from 5-7pm, and everybody was happy.

cheese... maybe i should write to some engineer who plans all this stuff...

The Passion

I watched the first 1/2 hour of the Gibson's The Passion of the Christ again and I think it's a great film. I should watch the rest too sometime. It's a graphic illustration of what went on back then, and draws well the agony that's sometimes missing in the passion story. Some say it's too hollywoodish - like there would be something negative to that. I generally like Hollywood stuff - better than stuff awarded in Cannes (like the oppressive Finnish ones with no background music, just a couple of door slams, a burp, fart and a cuss). Good Hollywood films are easy to read and enjoyable.

In the Passion I really like misty blue scenes from Gethsemane in the very beginning of the film. I think they are one of the coolest screen shots ever. With panning camera, slow motion, and people moving in three layers, all in black&blue except near the torches. I think it looks great.

Another thing that stood out this time was the snake that first flashed from the devils nose and then approached Jesus, but ended up being crushed - illustrating the temptation that Jesus overcame.

It's in a way after C. S. Lewis' reasoning on the heart of sin. He writes somewhere that in the core all sin is about turning away from serving God to serve oneself. That's what happened with the apple in Garden, that's what happened in heaven at Satan's downfall, and that's what was about to happen at Gethsemane to Jesus according to Gospel stories when he prayed that 'the cup could be taken away from him'. Gibson's snake - coming from inside the devil - is making the point that it's essentially same thing that has corrupted the devil and the man, but failed to corrupt Christ who in fact broke it's bondage for our sake as well.

Although theologically speaking the crushing of the snake - the sin - happened at the point of death of Jesus, Gibson story illustrates it's emotional side from Jesus perspective. As to himself, the temptation to drop out from the plan was overcome there. From then on he was like the lamb at the slaugtherer, calm and silent.

Post-everything

Last night Benjamin woke me up in a critical moment and could not get into sleep for awhile. In those moments all kinds of thoughts begin to circulate, most being not worthwhile remembering next morning. This is one those, but here it comes anyway.

It appears that if you present yourself as on the hip you'd better name it post-whatever. (In my lately reading I've run into terms besides post-modernity such as post-evangelicalism, post-theology, and some other post's.) Being "post" gives you freedom to link your thoughts with the good part of the respective set of ideas, without being identified with all the representatives, or poor applications of those ideas. Besides all the cases when "post" is an appropriate prefix, it also gives freedom to publish incomplete ideas that perhaps are not even expected to hold thoroughly consistent, because they are laid out as a critique towards what the thinker is being "post".

For big amount of cases the usage of "post" as the key definition demonstrates more inability to express what's the idea is for - what characterizes it. Simple "post" is more of a negative on what it's not - or what it's going-beyond.

Perhaps that the case with postmodernity too. Perhaps the term will be later on replaced with something more contentful. It might be that it would be impossible to define it by the person involved, anyway (like you cannot objectively know yourself - if anything) Perhaps renaissance was not named by the contemporaries either - modernity might have - but the meaning of the word has certainly got new twists afterwards.

I would think that either all the post's will be relatively short eras giving in to something better definable, or then future post's wont' be post-post-modernity etc, but rather they have defined the current post through another characteristic.

...Luckily then, I fell asleep again and had a restful morning...