We have spent three months on human structures.
In March we looked at Job, false structures and started talking about order vs chaos or Apollonian vs Dionysian and even touched on yin/yang.
In April we looked at the Wild at Heart phenomenon and how it has affected the church and perpetuated a not always female friendly male vs female structure. We also looked at the tiny boxes or structures that small-minded men build for women using religion to beat them into down into those boxes.
In May, we looked at big-hearted men and contrasted the loving freedom they offer to women with the limiting, restrictive structures that small mind men uphold for their sisters. We also did a rather long series on Chimananda Adichie's "Single Story" and how this applied to human structure.
Perhaps I've spend an inordinate amount of time on human structures. If so, it is only because I want people to start discerning the existence of these human structures and begin to hold them up to the light of scripture in order to debunk the false structures.
But this month, the lovely month of June, we will turn our attention on some of the ways that God structures things and how they differ from human structures.
And here I will leave you a verse.
Isaiah 55:8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord.
Vs 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, SO are My ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.
Showing posts with label Chaos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chaos. Show all posts
Monday, June 6, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Single Story and Structure
One of the reasons that I spent so much time on the Single Story is because it was a new way of looking at what we have been discussing here.
Whether fiction or non-fiction, a story is a structure. It has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. And stories have always been one of the ways we have used to make sense in a world that often doesn't make sense. Stories help us to find or create order out of our chaos.
As mentioned before, structures, including stories, are not bad in and of themselves. We human beings crave structure for the sake of security. But structures, even decent structures, can be used or recreated into something limiting and abusive.
The forcing of religious, gender and family structures within Christianity has crossed the line and become abusive. They have been constructed by those who cling to the past and fear the future. They have been constructed by those who worship structure and find their safety in enforcing structures rather than in seeking and following God, the Chief Architect and Builder. [Hebrews 11:10 New American Standard]
My desire is to seek God and to find Him and to learn what is important to Him and to follow the structures He lays out.
One of the best places in the Bible to learn about the structures and order that are truly important to God is in the words of Jesus in red. And a good place to start for the weary is in Matthew chapter eleven.
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
The structures of men are exhausting.
The structures of God bring rest to our souls.
Whether fiction or non-fiction, a story is a structure. It has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. And stories have always been one of the ways we have used to make sense in a world that often doesn't make sense. Stories help us to find or create order out of our chaos.
As mentioned before, structures, including stories, are not bad in and of themselves. We human beings crave structure for the sake of security. But structures, even decent structures, can be used or recreated into something limiting and abusive.
The forcing of religious, gender and family structures within Christianity has crossed the line and become abusive. They have been constructed by those who cling to the past and fear the future. They have been constructed by those who worship structure and find their safety in enforcing structures rather than in seeking and following God, the Chief Architect and Builder. [Hebrews 11:10 New American Standard]
My desire is to seek God and to find Him and to learn what is important to Him and to follow the structures He lays out.
One of the best places in the Bible to learn about the structures and order that are truly important to God is in the words of Jesus in red. And a good place to start for the weary is in Matthew chapter eleven.
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
The structures of men are exhausting.
The structures of God bring rest to our souls.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
I'm Not Alone/Order vs Chaos
I guess others on Blogger are also dealing with this paragraph crunching monster. I've had several suggestions and am going to try one today.
One of the overviews of the Order vs Chaos thinking within the church that I want to look at is the Puritan view. The Puritans and other like groups are rigid and structured and lean heavily on the need for order and light. They shun any disorder and unorthodox creativity as devious and dangerous. The witch trials would be and extreme example.
There is a reason the term Puritanical was coined. This way of thinking is so rigid and so oppressive that people wilted under it until they could handle it no more, then they rebelled, either internally or externally. Those that rebel are looked upon as evil, dark.
The order and structure becomes the god and is cemented as God's divine order.
Women are particularly feared in these systems by the men in charge because women often approach things differently. And instead of being given space for this, the men of these systems are threatened by this because it doesn't line up with their view of God's order. So anything different than the rigid structure is viewed as apostate. Any form of freedom, even freedom inspired by the Holy Spirit, is squashed.
I heard the story of a Mennonite woman who began to seek God and find freedom in her own home. She did nothing out of order concerning her sect, she just started getting happy in the Spirit and in the knowledge of Jesus. After a while the elders of the church became uncomfortable and went to the woman's husband and ordered him to bring his wife back into submission.
The good news to this story was that it was too late. The husband could see that what his wife was pursuing was of God and in fact had benefited from this freedom himself. He left that Mennonite church and took his family to one that was experiencing a revival.
Here is a post on No Longer Quivering about a gal who suffered from a marriage to a mentally unstable, rigid-structure thinker. The paragraph I'd like people to note is tenth from the bottom (believe me, it was easier to count that way).
[Also note that the husband in this story, with all his rigid structuring upon structure was really hiding a dark secret that he ultimately would not be able to hide or defeat with all his complicated structures.]
http://nolongerquivering.com/2011/03/25/justice-is-no-lady-chapter-5-in-pursuit-of-biblical-theology/
One of the overviews of the Order vs Chaos thinking within the church that I want to look at is the Puritan view. The Puritans and other like groups are rigid and structured and lean heavily on the need for order and light. They shun any disorder and unorthodox creativity as devious and dangerous. The witch trials would be and extreme example.
There is a reason the term Puritanical was coined. This way of thinking is so rigid and so oppressive that people wilted under it until they could handle it no more, then they rebelled, either internally or externally. Those that rebel are looked upon as evil, dark.
The order and structure becomes the god and is cemented as God's divine order.
Women are particularly feared in these systems by the men in charge because women often approach things differently. And instead of being given space for this, the men of these systems are threatened by this because it doesn't line up with their view of God's order. So anything different than the rigid structure is viewed as apostate. Any form of freedom, even freedom inspired by the Holy Spirit, is squashed.
I heard the story of a Mennonite woman who began to seek God and find freedom in her own home. She did nothing out of order concerning her sect, she just started getting happy in the Spirit and in the knowledge of Jesus. After a while the elders of the church became uncomfortable and went to the woman's husband and ordered him to bring his wife back into submission.
The good news to this story was that it was too late. The husband could see that what his wife was pursuing was of God and in fact had benefited from this freedom himself. He left that Mennonite church and took his family to one that was experiencing a revival.
Here is a post on No Longer Quivering about a gal who suffered from a marriage to a mentally unstable, rigid-structure thinker. The paragraph I'd like people to note is tenth from the bottom (believe me, it was easier to count that way).
[Also note that the husband in this story, with all his rigid structuring upon structure was really hiding a dark secret that he ultimately would not be able to hide or defeat with all his complicated structures.]
http://nolongerquivering.com/2011/03/25/justice-is-no-lady-chapter-5-in-pursuit-of-biblical-theology/
Monday, March 28, 2011
What I Said Was...
Since my last Blogger post is all messed up, I thought I'd repeat something here that is at the end of the previous crunched together post.
Apollonian is always about light, structure, order, and is always portrayed as male. Dionysian can be chaos and negative. Or it can be freedom from over structured repression making it good. And even though Dionysian is a man, he had some 'feminine qualities.
I've seen people claiming that anarchy is good and believe what they mean is freedom from oppressive rule. Dionysian can also be portrayed as nature loving and happy dancing out in the forest with flower garlands on their heads. This is also generally viewed as positive but can also be viewed as negative.
I'm saying all this to point out that Apollonian/Dionysian can be portrayed as order/chaos or oppression/freedom or structured/freestyle or stiff/creative or any other number of things. It really is all quite squishy and mailable in the hands of whoever wants to tell the story or use it for their own purposes.
And again, for the sake of labeling and understanding our world, these constructs aren't necessarily bad. But they are not suitable foundations for building doctrine. And this is what I want to get into in future posts.
Apollonian is always about light, structure, order, and is always portrayed as male. Dionysian can be chaos and negative. Or it can be freedom from over structured repression making it good. And even though Dionysian is a man, he had some 'feminine qualities.
I've seen people claiming that anarchy is good and believe what they mean is freedom from oppressive rule. Dionysian can also be portrayed as nature loving and happy dancing out in the forest with flower garlands on their heads. This is also generally viewed as positive but can also be viewed as negative.
I'm saying all this to point out that Apollonian/Dionysian can be portrayed as order/chaos or oppression/freedom or structured/freestyle or stiff/creative or any other number of things. It really is all quite squishy and mailable in the hands of whoever wants to tell the story or use it for their own purposes.
And again, for the sake of labeling and understanding our world, these constructs aren't necessarily bad. But they are not suitable foundations for building doctrine. And this is what I want to get into in future posts.
Order vs Chaos Recap
We've talked about order vs chaos here and I'd like to move on to more specific and general examples, but first feel the need to pull a couple things together and clarify something in particular.
We mentioned in the March 4th post the story of Job and how his friends tried to make sense of a situation that doesn't make sense and pointed out that it is human nature to try to do this. The story of Job happened long before the Greeks came along with their Apollo and Dionysus and even longer ago than when the terms and philosophy of Apollonian and Dionysian were coined by Nietzsche in the late 1800s.
Nietzsche was only labeling what he saw as the push and pull of the opposing forces that people have always seen like in Job's case. (We talked about the Philosophy in the March 7th post.)
We also compare the Apollonian and Dionysian concept to the concept of yin and yang in our March 12 th post. We talked about how sometimes good and bad are attributed to Apollonian or Dionysian or both or how they can just sort of balance each other and how this is pretty arbitrary and left to the discretion of the one who applies it.
One other thing I want to bring up is that, whereas Apollonian is nearly always about light and structure, Dionysian can be about either chaos and somewhat negative, or about freedom from restriction and even tyranny and this is always good. I've seen some people claim that anarchy is good, and it appears that what those people want is freedom from oppression.
Dionysian is also portrayed as nature loving, peace loving, all happy and dancing out in the forest with garlands on their heads. This is also viewed, generally, as positive. But just as much, it can be viewed as negative. I guess what I'm saying is that is it a bit mixed up. Apollonian/Dionysian can be viewed as, order/chaos or oppression/freedom or structure/freestyle or any other number of things. And again, for the sake of labeling and understanding our world, these things don't have to be viewed as anything more than description or light categorizing. But these thought processes are not a foundation on which to build doctrine. And this is what I'm wanting to deal with a bit in future posts.
We mentioned in the March 4th post the story of Job and how his friends tried to make sense of a situation that doesn't make sense and pointed out that it is human nature to try to do this. The story of Job happened long before the Greeks came along with their Apollo and Dionysus and even longer ago than when the terms and philosophy of Apollonian and Dionysian were coined by Nietzsche in the late 1800s.
Nietzsche was only labeling what he saw as the push and pull of the opposing forces that people have always seen like in Job's case. (We talked about the Philosophy in the March 7th post.)
We also compare the Apollonian and Dionysian concept to the concept of yin and yang in our March 12 th post. We talked about how sometimes good and bad are attributed to Apollonian or Dionysian or both or how they can just sort of balance each other and how this is pretty arbitrary and left to the discretion of the one who applies it.
One other thing I want to bring up is that, whereas Apollonian is nearly always about light and structure, Dionysian can be about either chaos and somewhat negative, or about freedom from restriction and even tyranny and this is always good. I've seen some people claim that anarchy is good, and it appears that what those people want is freedom from oppression.
Dionysian is also portrayed as nature loving, peace loving, all happy and dancing out in the forest with garlands on their heads. This is also viewed, generally, as positive. But just as much, it can be viewed as negative. I guess what I'm saying is that is it a bit mixed up. Apollonian/Dionysian can be viewed as, order/chaos or oppression/freedom or structure/freestyle or any other number of things. And again, for the sake of labeling and understanding our world, these things don't have to be viewed as anything more than description or light categorizing. But these thought processes are not a foundation on which to build doctrine. And this is what I'm wanting to deal with a bit in future posts.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Order vs Chaos in Pop Culture
The funny thing about order vs chaos and the human condition is how much it pops up in entertainment. The opposing forces of Apollonian and Dionysian fighting for power and/or balance crop up all over the place.
The girls and I were just watching Jurassic park the other night and sure enough, there it was. Though I was somewhat aware of it before, only after thinking about it for this blog did I realize how blatant it really was.
John Hammond, the creator of Jurassic Park, represents the Apollonian side. He's dressed in white and has complete control (or so he thinks) of this amusement park with electric fences and safety precautions.
Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and dressed in black, is spokes person for the Dionysus side which is actually represented by the Dinosaurs. He is the one who keeps talking about the chaos theory.
In this scenario, the Dionysian is not necessarily bad. It is just nature doing what nature does. And when that nature is as big and unpredictable as dinosaurs, it is the Apollonian that comes off as in the wrong for trying to create and control what cannot be controlled so easily.
Another obvious place that speaks of the struggle between chaos and control is the TV series and movie "Get Smart". The opposing forces actually bear the names. The good guys work for "Control" and the bad guys work for "Kaos". And in this scenario control is obviously good while chaos is obviously bad.
Remember the old Star Trek from the 60s or at least have you seen a few reruns? Did you know that Captain Kirk had Apollonian and Dionysian advisers. Dr. McCoy was Dionysian and ran on emotion and intuition, whereas Mr. Spock was strictly Apollonian in nature always concerned with logic and reason. And Kirk was always trying to find the balance between them. In this case, then, there are no good guys or bad guys, only a striving for balance between the two poles.
Others who were influenced by the concept of Apollonian vs Dionysian include Stephan King, Ayn Rand, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, and the band Rush
The point of this post is to make people aware of how our culture is influenced by this thinking and how WE are influenced by this thinking and how we may apply it to our lives whether we are aware of it or not. Again remember Job and how his friends worked so hard to Apollonize or use Apollonianisms to order and explain Job's unexplainable chaos. It is human nature to do this. But we must remember, our nature is flawed and fallen and we are but finite living in a universe much bigger than we are. We must take care and not use Apollonianisms when really we ought to be seeking God.
The girls and I were just watching Jurassic park the other night and sure enough, there it was. Though I was somewhat aware of it before, only after thinking about it for this blog did I realize how blatant it really was.
John Hammond, the creator of Jurassic Park, represents the Apollonian side. He's dressed in white and has complete control (or so he thinks) of this amusement park with electric fences and safety precautions.
Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician and dressed in black, is spokes person for the Dionysus side which is actually represented by the Dinosaurs. He is the one who keeps talking about the chaos theory.
In this scenario, the Dionysian is not necessarily bad. It is just nature doing what nature does. And when that nature is as big and unpredictable as dinosaurs, it is the Apollonian that comes off as in the wrong for trying to create and control what cannot be controlled so easily.
Another obvious place that speaks of the struggle between chaos and control is the TV series and movie "Get Smart". The opposing forces actually bear the names. The good guys work for "Control" and the bad guys work for "Kaos". And in this scenario control is obviously good while chaos is obviously bad.
Remember the old Star Trek from the 60s or at least have you seen a few reruns? Did you know that Captain Kirk had Apollonian and Dionysian advisers. Dr. McCoy was Dionysian and ran on emotion and intuition, whereas Mr. Spock was strictly Apollonian in nature always concerned with logic and reason. And Kirk was always trying to find the balance between them. In this case, then, there are no good guys or bad guys, only a striving for balance between the two poles.
Others who were influenced by the concept of Apollonian vs Dionysian include Stephan King, Ayn Rand, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, and the band Rush
The point of this post is to make people aware of how our culture is influenced by this thinking and how WE are influenced by this thinking and how we may apply it to our lives whether we are aware of it or not. Again remember Job and how his friends worked so hard to Apollonize or use Apollonianisms to order and explain Job's unexplainable chaos. It is human nature to do this. But we must remember, our nature is flawed and fallen and we are but finite living in a universe much bigger than we are. We must take care and not use Apollonianisms when really we ought to be seeking God.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Seeking Order in a Chaotic World
I love talking to my friend, Jane. She stimulates my thinking beyond where I would normally go. Under my "Men Defining Sweet for Women" post we had a lively discussion about Greek myths and how we have inherited some of the ways they think and some of their attitudes in Western culture and how some of that thinking has infiltrated the church.
She brought up the Greek god, Dionysus and some of the debasing rituals that women had to go through to become part of this cult and how that relates today to the porn industry and porn entering the church via preachers who preach on sex and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in the marriage bed. She also brought up the link between porn, debasing women, and the teaching of strict gender roles and hierarchy within marriage and church. You can see her comments and her two links under that February 21 post.
And as I said, her comments and connections starts my brain up and I begin to make connections of my own. Because once a person brings up Dionysus, the Greek god of "wine, music, ecstasy, and intoxication," the first thing that jumps into my head is Dionysus's brother, Apollo, the Greek god of the "sun, dreams, reason, and plastic visual arts."
And the reason I associate these two gods together is because of a college course that I took back in the 80s on Aesthetics that used these two gods as opposing forces in the movements of art and music.
Here is a short Wiki explanation of this philosophy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
Now, I actually have more to say on the push and pull of these opposing forces and how they relate to art, music, and literature. But before I get into any of that, if I ever get into that, let me point out how much this thinking affects us.
If Dionysus represents chaos and lack of order, then Apollo represents structure and order. And we humans have a tendency to crave order. Chaos and being unsure of things or not understanding things stresses us out. We always have to come up with reasons for things. And I've noted that Art, Science, Religion, and Literature are all means of making sense out of a world that doesn't always makes sense.
Let's look back at Job whom we talked about last Friday, March 4th. Job's friends suffered from an intense desire to make sense out of a situation that made no sense. From their limited understanding of God and our fallen world, they tried to superimpose reason or order on the chaos that Job suffered. But their reason and order were terribly inadequate and faulty. We can learn from their mistake and not jump to conclusions about situations that don't make sense. That is one of the things that prayer is for. It is finite and limited us reaching out to the infinite and unlimited God who knows the end from the beginning.
The infinite God did eventually answer Job. We can learn this from Job's story as well. There is an answer. One that we may not be able to see but that God sees plainly. This is what faith is for. Knowing that there is a God and that there is One who is in control and Who can answer and Who will answer. And it is God who can bring order to our chaos. But we must make sure that we are actually seeking God's answers and not what finite men with a Western Civilization Apollonian drive say that the answers are.
She brought up the Greek god, Dionysus and some of the debasing rituals that women had to go through to become part of this cult and how that relates today to the porn industry and porn entering the church via preachers who preach on sex and pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in the marriage bed. She also brought up the link between porn, debasing women, and the teaching of strict gender roles and hierarchy within marriage and church. You can see her comments and her two links under that February 21 post.
And as I said, her comments and connections starts my brain up and I begin to make connections of my own. Because once a person brings up Dionysus, the Greek god of "wine, music, ecstasy, and intoxication," the first thing that jumps into my head is Dionysus's brother, Apollo, the Greek god of the "sun, dreams, reason, and plastic visual arts."
And the reason I associate these two gods together is because of a college course that I took back in the 80s on Aesthetics that used these two gods as opposing forces in the movements of art and music.
Here is a short Wiki explanation of this philosophy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
Now, I actually have more to say on the push and pull of these opposing forces and how they relate to art, music, and literature. But before I get into any of that, if I ever get into that, let me point out how much this thinking affects us.
If Dionysus represents chaos and lack of order, then Apollo represents structure and order. And we humans have a tendency to crave order. Chaos and being unsure of things or not understanding things stresses us out. We always have to come up with reasons for things. And I've noted that Art, Science, Religion, and Literature are all means of making sense out of a world that doesn't always makes sense.
Let's look back at Job whom we talked about last Friday, March 4th. Job's friends suffered from an intense desire to make sense out of a situation that made no sense. From their limited understanding of God and our fallen world, they tried to superimpose reason or order on the chaos that Job suffered. But their reason and order were terribly inadequate and faulty. We can learn from their mistake and not jump to conclusions about situations that don't make sense. That is one of the things that prayer is for. It is finite and limited us reaching out to the infinite and unlimited God who knows the end from the beginning.
The infinite God did eventually answer Job. We can learn this from Job's story as well. There is an answer. One that we may not be able to see but that God sees plainly. This is what faith is for. Knowing that there is a God and that there is One who is in control and Who can answer and Who will answer. And it is God who can bring order to our chaos. But we must make sure that we are actually seeking God's answers and not what finite men with a Western Civilization Apollonian drive say that the answers are.
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