gratuitous

The game looks easy, that's why it sells

one more day!

Hello friends. I'm writing to you from New Jersey to ask you to go to www.ideablob.com and vote for us if you haven't done so yet. We are very close to winning the $10,000 and it would be such an awesome thing to be able to use that money to help Rhonda's house be built. I know a lot of you have voted...thank you! But if you haven't please take a few minutes to do so.

www.ideablob.com

Thanks!!

....

I hope all of you have downloaded "Boomerang" by now, if not, please do it...what the heck are you waiting for? Right now I'm freezing cold in Grove City, Pennsylvania. On the way up to the campus of the college we are playing, I saw some dude snowboarding down a shallow white sloap and I immediately wanted a sled or toboggin or whatever they are called. Guh, it's so friggin cold. I'm drowning in a lot of words I don't know right now. I'm reading a book about Kierkegaards influence in post/modernity. After most essays, I usually have to settle for a very general, vague and possibly inaccurate understanding of what was discussed. I'm gonna offer and excerpt from book, regarding the "individual's" existence within the "crowd"...the abstract "public".

"Thus, the individual portrays the high pesonal and social stakes involved in developing critical awareness; for it is not the individual who repudiates community, but rather the crowd which subjects the individual to social opprobrium and threatens to destroy her/him. As Kierkegaard puts it, 'The Crowd is untruth. Therefore Christ was crucified......; and further, the crowd is unrepentent'"


Bye for now.

Boomerang

Everyone go download our new song "Boomerang" right now...yes, right now! www.whatismae.com

god of the gaps

this post can serve as an answer to the previous post..but it also expresses some other ideas.

I'm frustrated with the religious communities involvement and concern with the teaching of evolution, or the general acceptance of the theory. This is exhausting and superfluous. I remember when the DaVinci Code came out and there was an indignant reaction from certain religious circles. How silly! I don't know why this sort of debate, discussion, or even proposal of ideas, should be an issue of contention with "believers", or with the collective religious community. I do not mean to explore or defend evolution or creationism, but this distracting issue is just a microcosm. It raises the question...are we to have faith in scripture, or are we to have to faith in God...and are the two always aligned with each other? I think that an essential characteristic of a belief in Jesus Christ is the humble resignation to the idea that anything goes. As much of a guide as the bible should be, perhaps the exigent nature of Jesus challenges the religious "status quo" as it is "understood." Am I alone in thinking that the bible raises more questions than it answers, and therefore, leading us to rationalize and interpret that which we don't understand through subjective prayer? Whatever understanding one may gain through communication with Christ, no matter how outlandish or sober it may be, it is very hard for any external or objective qualifications to be made regarding this persons revelation, as this relation pertains exclusively to the person who witnessed it. Further, regarding one's own understanding...s/he may recognize the unprecedented and unexpected ways in which Christ can work, although, those divine influences have to make sense in a contextual framework. God's will has to fall within the parameters (however expansive they may be) of one's conditioned (consciously or subconsciously) world view...other wise it would come across in a indecipherable nature, on top of an already enigmatic spiritual language. I've heard the term "god of the gaps" used to describe the employment of lose faith in the scientific arena. Any gap that may exist in empirical studies would be explained away by attributing those "mysteries" to the handwork of God, but I think this idea exists within our own spiritual comprehension as well. Perhaps the more difficult ideas narrated in the bible are understood, rationalized, "culturalized", in a way that requires the use of our own intellect and judgement. God's comprehensive message is adjusted in a way that makes him an extension of our own idea of perfection. I do not mean to imply that this action is intentional and always a way of making God's will convenient to one's own life, but I do think that is a fair assessment. It's not a tool or a practice that is applied circumstantially, rather, it is an intrinsic part of our spiritual development and growth. The point of all this is to explore the possibility of God's message, in addition to being uniquely reciprocal based on one's personal relationship, being compromised and distorted when put forth into a public forum, and for that reason the separation of Church and State must be explicit and upheld. The recognition of "Christianity" as the state religion does nothing to uphold the will or reputation of Christ. We have compromised the purity of Christ through the herd-like appropriation, heist, and undermining of the essential transformation that can result from an honest, isolated, and self-motivated approach to God.

i'm curious

i'm curious!

If it was proven or revealed that Mary was not a virgin, would you still believe in Christ?

If evolution was revealed to be true, would you still believe in Christ?

if salvation was dependent upon Christ's selection of the chosen, rather than self motivated belief in your salvation through Christ's death alone...would you still be a Christian?

If certain verses in the bible were not of God's influence, but of the social agenda as man saw it , therefore compromising the truth of the book as whole...would that alter your faith?

If you're understanding of Christ and Christianity, faith and God were altered in anyway, or shaken to your core..if the foundations of that truth were revealed to be something different and seemingly contrary, would you still retain that faith?

i'm curious.

vote for MAE

Hey everyone, first of all, I should mention that we had a grand time in Malibu this weekend. I wouldn't mind being in school for life at Pepperdine, the campus has a pretty sweet location looking out over the pacific ocean. The show was a whole lot of fun, thanks to those of you who came out. The reason for this post is to ask for all over you to please take the time to head over to ideablob.com to vote for MAE. If we win, we will be given a grant of $10,000 that can go towards our goals for this year. It only takes two minutes!!

VOTE FOR OUR IDEA HERE!