Wait just a minute, young woman. Didn’t you just tell us two or three days ago that you didn’t know what you were going to talk about at the conference?
And now here you are, delivering one of the most beautiful speeches I’ve ever heard! It was artful in its use of recurring metaphors, made several great and serious points, and was very funny at appropriate moments!
I have to give the Senior Warden’s report on Sunday at our annual parish meeting, and if is 5% as good as this, I’ll be ecstatic!
In regard to the last item on the list: The problem with the idea of marriage equality is that it is impossible. Think about it. If the husband and wife disagree on a course of action, someone has to break the tie vote. Whether it is the husband or the wife who does this, you do not have equality.
Wow. I knew some time ago that Jory Micah was problematic, but after reading mention of her here I googled her and she has really gone completely off the deep end. Sad but not surprising.
It's helpful that you portrayed communion as the thing which repairs atomism. By claiming that, you're taking off the table several alternative, nostalgically conditioned definitions of "atomism", and re-placing the issue squarely where it belongs: spiritual gratitude.
If it is actually true that communion repairs atomism, then this must also be true: communion is doing something which repairs the problem you describe with technology.
And, since communion is very very old: old as the first couple: then it's essential to recognize that there simply is no "start date" to the problem of technology.
If it's really a problem, it didn't start with the clothes washing machine. And it didn't start with automated weaving looms in Scotland in 1759. And didn't start with Gutenberg. And it didn't start with the invention of the longbow.
Keep going back. Do the etymology on the word "technology". It doesn't mean "stuff with microchips". It means "stuff which man made".
And what's the problem with stuff that's man made? Man worships it.
Heck, he even worships stuff which he didn't make at all, but only God made.
Basically if it's made, then man gets a perverse thrill out of making it into a God.
That's why we should worship only that which is begotten, not made.
This means the problem of technology is either way, way worse than we thought, or it's way way less bad than we thought, depending upon how we look at it.
The folks at Babel were quite non-atomized, for a while. They were in harmony, working together, socially intertwined.
They just weren't using the tech God gave them to love God. He didn't smash their tech... just their language.
We just went through the first 12 chapters of Genesis in our church teachings. One thing that jumped out was that by staying together in Shinar the people were disobeying God's command to "fill the earth." The "technology" of firing brick and using mortar wasn't the problem. It was their disobedience to the instructions to fill the earth.
You are correct that things aren't the problem. It is man's bent to misuse and worship things. (What little boy doesn't turn a random stick or their finger into a gun which is turned on a sibling or friend?)
Technology can exacerbate the practical loss of interdependence. When physical requirements don't force me to collaborate with my family and community in order to survive, the illusion of being able to live independently is reinforced. Even when one recognizes the need to "connect" with others, one can get a pseudoconnection via technology and not be inconvenienced in real life. "Thoughts and prayers" are substituted for a ride to the doctor and delivering a meal.
That take on Shinar is correct. God dispersing them was a proto- dispersion just like the one he would use on Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the exilic peoples later on.
It's interesting how atomized those scatterings feel to us. Our tendency is to assume we have a right to generations of settled family life, when in fact, God seems to want to make his people literal refugees and strangers over and over. Very atomizing feeling.
If we get too comfy, we start to assume we can live without the church.
The only answer to the illusion that people are independent of one another, that man is an island, is the church. All other attempts to solve that problem are counterfeit. That's why communion fixes the problem.
Same here with the fridge!! For 30 years I have had doors that will not open all the way and crispers that can't be cleaned. It's a wonder we are all still alive!! But praise be to God. The new kitchen will be beginning on April 1. Oh how I hope that is not an April fools joke because this kitchen Reno started in JULY!!!!!
"The thing is, the man, even when he doesn’t want to be, is the ‘head’ of the house, ontologically, just as Christ is head over the church. He may be really bad at it. He may be dysfunctional and weak. He may be tyrannical. But nothing he, nor the members of his family, can say will ever undo this fact." This, this, this. The sooner we accept this reality the sooner we can be about praying for and supporting husbands as the heads of their families. There is no one better for the job than the man who has it. God delights in pouring out his blessings through a husband's headship.
Wait just a minute, young woman. Didn’t you just tell us two or three days ago that you didn’t know what you were going to talk about at the conference?
And now here you are, delivering one of the most beautiful speeches I’ve ever heard! It was artful in its use of recurring metaphors, made several great and serious points, and was very funny at appropriate moments!
I have to give the Senior Warden’s report on Sunday at our annual parish meeting, and if is 5% as good as this, I’ll be ecstatic!
In regard to the last item on the list: The problem with the idea of marriage equality is that it is impossible. Think about it. If the husband and wife disagree on a course of action, someone has to break the tie vote. Whether it is the husband or the wife who does this, you do not have equality.
Wow. I knew some time ago that Jory Micah was problematic, but after reading mention of her here I googled her and she has really gone completely off the deep end. Sad but not surprising.
It's helpful that you portrayed communion as the thing which repairs atomism. By claiming that, you're taking off the table several alternative, nostalgically conditioned definitions of "atomism", and re-placing the issue squarely where it belongs: spiritual gratitude.
If it is actually true that communion repairs atomism, then this must also be true: communion is doing something which repairs the problem you describe with technology.
And, since communion is very very old: old as the first couple: then it's essential to recognize that there simply is no "start date" to the problem of technology.
If it's really a problem, it didn't start with the clothes washing machine. And it didn't start with automated weaving looms in Scotland in 1759. And didn't start with Gutenberg. And it didn't start with the invention of the longbow.
Keep going back. Do the etymology on the word "technology". It doesn't mean "stuff with microchips". It means "stuff which man made".
And what's the problem with stuff that's man made? Man worships it.
Heck, he even worships stuff which he didn't make at all, but only God made.
Basically if it's made, then man gets a perverse thrill out of making it into a God.
That's why we should worship only that which is begotten, not made.
This means the problem of technology is either way, way worse than we thought, or it's way way less bad than we thought, depending upon how we look at it.
The folks at Babel were quite non-atomized, for a while. They were in harmony, working together, socially intertwined.
They just weren't using the tech God gave them to love God. He didn't smash their tech... just their language.
We just went through the first 12 chapters of Genesis in our church teachings. One thing that jumped out was that by staying together in Shinar the people were disobeying God's command to "fill the earth." The "technology" of firing brick and using mortar wasn't the problem. It was their disobedience to the instructions to fill the earth.
You are correct that things aren't the problem. It is man's bent to misuse and worship things. (What little boy doesn't turn a random stick or their finger into a gun which is turned on a sibling or friend?)
Technology can exacerbate the practical loss of interdependence. When physical requirements don't force me to collaborate with my family and community in order to survive, the illusion of being able to live independently is reinforced. Even when one recognizes the need to "connect" with others, one can get a pseudoconnection via technology and not be inconvenienced in real life. "Thoughts and prayers" are substituted for a ride to the doctor and delivering a meal.
That take on Shinar is correct. God dispersing them was a proto- dispersion just like the one he would use on Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the exilic peoples later on.
It's interesting how atomized those scatterings feel to us. Our tendency is to assume we have a right to generations of settled family life, when in fact, God seems to want to make his people literal refugees and strangers over and over. Very atomizing feeling.
If we get too comfy, we start to assume we can live without the church.
The only answer to the illusion that people are independent of one another, that man is an island, is the church. All other attempts to solve that problem are counterfeit. That's why communion fixes the problem.
Same here with the fridge!! For 30 years I have had doors that will not open all the way and crispers that can't be cleaned. It's a wonder we are all still alive!! But praise be to God. The new kitchen will be beginning on April 1. Oh how I hope that is not an April fools joke because this kitchen Reno started in JULY!!!!!
"The thing is, the man, even when he doesn’t want to be, is the ‘head’ of the house, ontologically, just as Christ is head over the church. He may be really bad at it. He may be dysfunctional and weak. He may be tyrannical. But nothing he, nor the members of his family, can say will ever undo this fact." This, this, this. The sooner we accept this reality the sooner we can be about praying for and supporting husbands as the heads of their families. There is no one better for the job than the man who has it. God delights in pouring out his blessings through a husband's headship.