wandering

Joel and Travis take the idea of evaluative outlooks and show how it relates to issues of unity in the Church, as well as the importance and role of (the central) doctrines, particularly those in the Nicene Creed. Is unity to be formed around the idea of disagreement with "respect," or is there some deeper unity that should drive us--not merely unity based on sharing a good number of beliefs, but rather one founded on perception formed by the evaluative outlook of love? That is, where is the unity of the Church found? And if you said, "Jesus," so did we. But we try to explain this in a way that gets us beyond Sunday School platitudes.

Joel and Travis finish up the series on evaluative outlooks and apologetics by drawing a contrast between that value that gives rise to scientific perception and that value at the heart of Christianity. What are these two values? What do they cause us to see? Are they at odds with one another? And how might apologetics be influenced by a clear recognition of the role of evaluative outlooks? I'm not sure they answer all these questions, but these are good questions nonetheless!

Joel and Travis get into how love affects one's perception of the world, and show, in outline, how embracing love as a fundamental value results in a rather radical metaphysical claim. They review some of the description of love (and of the bad view of love most of us hold), and then apply this to how we think of ourselves and our origin.

Joel and Travis talk about what love is, how it affects how we perceive, and how our values affect how we perceive love. Can you love someone to death? What is the relationship between our "whatness" and our "whoness," and why in the world would someone use such atrocious locutions? We mention a bit about the danger of Gnosticism, and begin to show how values can form our way of looking at evidence. Travis also keeps calling the audience "baby" for some reason.

Ever wonder why different people look at the same bit of evidence, and one sees it as compelling, while the other sees it as essentially nothing? Joel and Travis discuss evaluative outlooks: What are they? How do they affect the way we see evidence? How do we derive evidence from them? And how might apologetic method, and our view of Christian doctrine, shift when we recognize the values that lie beneath them?

Joel and Travis continue to use the deconstruction stories of Rhett and Link to push into how we do apologetics--specifically, how evidence seems to impact our view of a relationship, but our relationship does not seem to impact how we perceive evidence. Should one's relationship with Jesus translate into a different perception of what constitutes evidence? Does one's relationship with a friend do so? Is this just sloppy thinking? And how might all this impact how we view the place and nature of apologetics?

Joel and Travis begin to respond to the deconstruction stories of Rhett and Link, but not in the usual apologetic manner. Instead, they begin to look at how evaluative outlooks play into how we weigh evidence--from issues of benefit of the doubt/burden of proof to our understanding of the nature of truth and an obsession with certainty. Perhaps we've all been doing our "defense of the faith" in a truncated manner that in fact discourages faith?

Rhett and Link (of "Good Mythical Morning" and "Ear Biscuits") recently described the deconstruction of their faith. We start by talking about some of what we think they got right. We talk about the danger of holding rigidly to non-essential beliefs (and how they get confused with essential beliefs), the ways in which we say "love" but are actually teaching the opposite, and so on. One of us even goes on a strange tirade about denominations and division in the Church. The goal of this series is to evaluate our approach to faith and apologetics, and to see if there is a better way to talk about both.

Recently, Rhett and Link (of "Good Mythical Morning" and "Ear Biscuits") shared their stories of how they left the faith. Many have responded in various ways. Joel and Travis start a series that will ultimately dig into the heart of apologetics itself--how the method of apologetics may be faulty, and how it supports a view of Christianity that may have the right information, but not the right perception of that information. This episode introduces some of the themes and ideas that will come out in this series.

Joel and Travis talk about the last of the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust. What counts as lust versus just appreciating beauty? Is sexual pleasure bad? What is the purpose of sex? Has Christian tradition ranked lust as one of the worst or least bad sins? How have we created strategies for dealing with lust that might really be exacerbating the problem? And what are some good responses to lust? Answers to these questions, along with perhaps a bit of TMI, in this podcast.