A Mind on a Mission

Recently, my wife and I returned from visiting her parents in Tennessee. It was a great trip, both relaxing and refreshing. But, even while I was physically on vacation, my mind was still very active at every turn (well, for the most part, HA HA). Now, what intrigues me in hindsight is that being a good steward of your ‘mind’ not only means training your ‘mind’, but also sharing your ‘mind’. When you share your ‘mind’, you’re not only sharing ideas and opinions, you are sharing yourself. You are sharing an intricate, intimate part of who you are. In essence, when you share your ‘mind’, you are showing someone that you love them. If you think about it, sharing your ‘mind’ is one way in which you can love your neighbor (as Christ commanded). Sharing the Christian Faith in a rational way (sharing your mind) is, in fact, loving God with your mind and loving your neighbor as yourself!

Let me qualify my term of ‘the mind’ more succinctly. What I mean by ‘the mind’ is simply the realm of knowledge that you posses. So, your ‘mind’, in my terminology for this blog, is the knowledge you have on any given subject.

Now, in regard to the Christian perspective, sharing your ‘mind’ is sharing Christ because Christ is the seat of all knowledge. Thus, you glorify God and illustrate what being a proper Christian is when you seek to edify others with your ‘mind’ (what you know).

So… let me encourage you to USE THAT BRAIN! Don’t let your fear of the unknown or the Secular Academy frighten you. If you don’t understand a concept, get educated. If you don’t know how to articulate yourself, start a blog or better yet, listen to others articulate ideas similar to your own (preachers, professors, or friends). The fact is, find a way to get your ‘mind’ out there. For you, it will be the greatest thing you ever did. For God, it will be what he was expecting you to do all along. So, go ahead, get yourself out there in the world intellectually. I don’t think you will ever regret that you did. And, if you need some help, let me know. That’s what friends or fellow bloggers are for, right?

Nit-picking the Nerds

Do you ever hear a statement or phrase that immediately conjures a mind-travelling journey down an ideological road that you have crafted for yourself? Do you hear words or phrases that lead you to analyze and explore, to intemplate, a fact and its relation to you. Do you read books, listen to morning shows or talk shows, or watch the news and find your mind exploring the ideas that they present, under your own terms. I hope you do! This is what I call nit-picking the nerds.

Nit-picking is when you hear a phrase or read a portion of some literature, only to immediately take that information, and the moments of enlightenment or curiosity, and analyze and explore their every facet. In a way, I guess it is accustomed to analytical reading. But, it is more than just reading to learn. Nit-picking is analyzing, but also exploring, discovering, and understanding. In short, it is introspective interaction with information you come in contact with, both printed literature and audio/visual sources. Nit-picking is Intemplation! Nit-picking is fun!

But, you may be asking, how do I do that? How do I nit-pick? Here is my suggestion.

1) Analyze: Read, watch, or listen with an engaged mind to whatever mode of information is available. Interact with that information at your own pace, and explore the sudden burst of inspiration (thoughts) you receive. In short, these are seed thoughts. And, with a little water and the proper care, they could turn into all sorts of beautiful things (poems, journal entries, and books, recordings, maybe even teaching lessons or sermons).

2) Explore: Once you have received a seed thought of inspiration and enlightenment, explore it. DO NOT LET IT GO! That means, do not continue watching or reading and tell yourself that you will come back to it later. You won’t! You will FORGET it! WRITE IT DOWN or talk it out into a voice recorder. Do something so you don’t lose it. Then, once you have written it down, think about it. Turn it over. Look underneath it. Poke it, rub it, and hold it. In short, get to know the idea. (Intemplate) Why did I think of this? What should I do with it? How does this relate to me? Can I help other people with this?

3) Discover: I have already alluded to this. Try and discern what you can do with this thought you have. For some of you, you might want to keep it for yourself. Maybe a journal entry or poem. For others, you want to share it with someone so you write a song, a blog, maybe even a book! Do what you want to with it. Be productive. So… if that means that you do nothing other than think more critically about how this idea has affected you, that’s OK. You may find that in discovering what to do with this information, you yourself have become a better person for it.

4) Understand: This is the crucial part of the exercise. At this juncture, you should have some idea of what prompted you to think the thought/s that you did. Maybe you have been studying philosophy and a certain thought alerted you to an undertone in a TV show. Perhaps you are an artist, and you saw something in the world in a different way for the first time which left you inspired and excited. Possibly, you are getting older and life seems to be different now than it ever has been before. In other words, you have made an effort to understand the idea you had and its effect upon you. At this point, you have successfully nit-picked your mode of information.

Remember, nit-picking is relative to the person. This is an introspective exercise. However, the main question you MUST answer is, are you going to be productive with it? Are you going to mold your thoughts accordingly, or are you going to mutilate them? Are you going to be a good steward of your mind? The world has too many people relying on how they feel. Become a person who relies on how they think. You have the ability to use your mind productively. Are you going to mold it, or mutilate it?

Think on That!

Ideological Buffets

This post comes after a mind-engaging, rigorous visit to a local bookstore that I previously made. I am always intrigued when I visit any bookstore, particularly because I know that there is an idea hiding around every corner, or shelf! Bookstores excite me, they challenge me, sometimes intimidate, but never bore. They are my playground, albeit the equipment (books) can sometimes lead to personal injury. It all depends on how adapted I am to processing the ideologies that are presented in each book.

So, why are bookstores so enthralling to some, boring to others, and supposedly 'user-friendly' to many. Is it the coffee shop, or the music. Is it the ambiance of the store. Maybe its a place to see what the current affairs are, or the latest comic book craze. Maybe, its just a nice place to be.

Just think, hundreds of people will visit every day: perusing, exploring, engaging, or posing. Do the people you see really understand? Do I understand? Do you? Are they there to engage the ideas of history, or seek guidance on current affairs. Or, do they peruse, overloading there brain with words they don't understand and ideas they can't assimilate through a pre-suppositional framework that looks dangerously like the great wave of pop-culture, and less like a decent college education. Do they understand the concepts around them. Do they see the delicate rhetoric, calculated logic, or philosophical tones of every piece of literature. Is the ideological buffet before them relevant to their education and knowledge, or only to their stereotype and self-esteem.

And, you may ask, why does it matter? Who cares, right? Well, hopefully someone! Our country has too many people who receive a six-figure education, and still graduate college with a 6th grade reading level. I don't know, but maybe if they spent more time on education and less time on entertainment, they could understand the basic vocabulary of a popular fiction novel, let alone a famous piece of literature. Indeed, bookstores, next to libraries, are the great halls of ideas. I guess the question is, which one do you visit more, and why? I'm sure that answer will be relative to your situation, or education!

Think on That!

P.S. Please feel free to comment. This post was meant convey introspection. All replies on this post are eagerly anticipated. Also, I do not mean to infer that people who visit bookstores are less intelligent than those who do not.
BTW: Are you a library-goer or a bookstore show-er?

Hypocrites and Helium Balloons

Who am I? Have you ever thought about that question? Undoubtedly, you probably have. Who hasn't thought about themselves. What I deserve. What I desire. What I know. What I don't know. Who am I, and where I am going. But really, what about me? That question probably echoes in the recesses of your mind the epitome of why you exist. Who am I and what is the meaning of my life. For most of us, the question is simplified to, where am I going?

If you are athletic, maybe you'll go to the NFL. Dramatic, a movie star. Intelligent, a doctor. Good looking, a model. Funny, a comedian. You get the point. But more fundamental is the question, who are you and where are you going? The underlying premise is that who you are is much more than what talent/characteristic you have. Who you are is mostly centered in what you believe about the world around you, and your place in that world. Also, who you are and where you are going finds its origin in where you have come from. Lets think about this ontologically.

If you came from a single-celled organism, one that has evolved over millions of years, then you are presently in a world of billions of people who are also in the same category. The meaning for your existence can only come from your circumstances. Only the strong survive.

If your existence derives from outside yourself, where does that come from and what impact does that have on the meaning for your life. Are you measuring yourself against the teachings of Muhammad. Maybe you see the world as god. God is in everything. Maybe the world is supernatural itself. Their are certain fairies, or demigods, that we must respect in order to have harmony. Maybe you rely upon the teachings of Jesus, found in the Bible.

I don't know where you stand. However, it seems apparent that what you think about yourself inevitably begins with what you think about the natural or supernatural. Inevitably, you will live what you believe. The problem is that most people do not live what they profess to believe, thus, they do not know who they really are because they have deceived themselves. Its like breathing in air from a helium balloon. You breathe in the world around you, only to expel it in a way contrary to how you usually do. Thus, your profession is changed because your source is not substantive, or solid. You become a hypocrite.

So, what source are you drawing from. And more importantly, is the source you draw from consistent with who you truly are. If not, maybe you should look at your source more carefully. Helium can only last so long before it disappears.

Think on That!

My bread and butter.

As promised, this is a post on my reading involving education and the Christian. This post comes by way of the book I am currently reading, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling. It is authored by James Sire.

The portion of this book that struck a chord in my mind is under a heading labeled, The Intellect as Battlefield. Sire claims that Intellectuals "watch ideas clash, pick up the pieces and start over again." Now, let it be known initially that Sire notes the difference between those who are intellectuals seeking after ideas compared to those who are intellectuals seeking after truth. This should clarify the inherent purpose that each category reflects.

What I like about this section is that Sire denotes that ideas, and the apprehension of those ideas in the university, are flawed and even re-worked. They are not absolute, like say, truth. They are more flexible, like butter spread over too much bread. There is plenty to go around, but the farther it goes, the more shallow and less rich it becomes. To prove this point, listen to Sire's point. His comment will end the blog for today.

"Philosophies lie like dying soldiers on the pages of history. Aristotle bests Plato; Plotinus leapfrogs Aristotle to save Plato by transforming him. Augustine raids the neo-Platonic Plotinus and Manicheans, then rejects the latter and transforms the former. Aquinas raids Aristotle and transforms his philosophy. These are not the sounds of ignorant armies clashing by night; they are the sounds of ideas launched by bows and cannons and missile launchers, fended off by shields and bucklers and pillboxes, or detected by radar and destroyed midair. The intellectual battlefield is strewn with corpses. Then out of the barracks of the universities come new heroes, young intellectuals. Each one surveys the filed, spies a corpse or perhaps a battalion of corpses, breathes new life into the bodies, and a new army forms. So arise the neo-Aristotelians, the neo-neo-Platonists, the neo-gnostics, the neo-scholastics. Freedom fighters or guerrillas - take your pick - from the ranks of the pseudo-intellectuals join the fray - the deconstructionists, the mere sociologists of knowledge, the postmodern brokers of power."

Thus, ideas are shaped and changed, usually by those who received their education in the university. But who cares, right? We will always have the butter of different ideas. To that I say you may be right. But be careful! Your excitement over the butter may leave you with little, or no, bread. And, by the way, no one can live on butter forever.

Think on That!

BTW: A big thanks to Bilbo Baggins for the butter and bread illustration.

Philosophy: My faithful friend and educated counselor

Philosophy. What does that word strike into your mind. Do you think of meaningless prattle. How about noble ambitions. Do you feel disgusted or excited. Is it boring or thrilling. Is it meaningful or bland. I would submit that philosophy is, in essence, an intemplation (my own word) of reality. It is discovery, experience, deduction, inference, discussion, and validity all mixed together.

In an abstract sense, philosophy is the beat that ideologies dance too. In a concrete manner, philosophy is the discipline that complements all other disciplines. It is the discipline that gives validity, and clear meaning to the primary discipline. Philosophy is a second-order discipline with a first order punch. But the most exciting thing about philosophy to me is that it is endless. It seems to go on forever, and yet their is a rhythm to its truths. Philosophy is, for me, one of the most challenging and freeing things I have ever encountered. What about you? Are you enthralled too?

Think on That!

The Golden Compass: Rehashed

After a brutal day at work last week, I stopped by the local movie store to rent some movies for a surprise movie night with the wife. I picked up The Golden Compass and Atonement. Needless to say, neither movie left us feeling exhilarated, interested, or even excited. Inherently, they left us empty, as meaning was apparently aloof. However, it did leave one desirable point of compensation. It engaged my mind to think of the inherent emptiness that life has within an Atheistic/Naturalistic world view.

Can this be true? Is Atheism meaningless? From an experiential side, I don't know! I have never been an Atheist. I can only comment subjectively. However, the strength of meaningless Atheism does not come from those who have never experienced it, but from those who have experienced it, and are continuing to live in it. Inevitably, Atheism brings to my mind anger, intoleration, deception, justifiable interest, and aggression. I don't mean to imply that people who are Atheist act like this, but it seems apparent that many do (e.g. Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, etc...) Now, while these men are labeled the "New Atheist", they share these condescending flaws with everyone else, supposedly, who is a practicing Atheist.

What does this have to do with the movies previously mentioned. Well, for Atonement there is not a whole lot. However, for the Golden Compass, everything. For those of you who have training in the liberal arts, you will immediately be able to see trends that are very common in our world today. Intolerance, Feminism (as the girl winds the heart of the boy in this movie), Vigilant Justice , Anti-Authoritarianism (Since the Magisterium, the version of Christianity in their world, are deceptive and intolerant), Tyranny of the Majority, Torture, Rebellion, etc.... Needless to say, most of these concepts propose might, power, and chaos. There is nothing that proposes meaning for the betterment of society. This movie, from my observation, promotes humanistic existentialism, laced with Atheism, that encourages children to change the world and authority structure to the way they want it if things seem to be 'unfair'! In other words, challenge your authority and change the world! That may be true. The question is, What authority, if any, should be challenged?

Also, if you have children, PLEASE DO NOT LET THEM WATCH THIS MOVIE. I am not saying that because I am a Christian, and I think that everything NOT CHRISTIANIZED (YES, THERE IS AN -ed) is bad. I am saying it because there is nothing heroic, noble, or just in this movie that seeks to serve a greater purpose.

Think on That!

P.S. All comments desired and appreciated. Tell me what you think, and if you have seen the movie.