trisected

Tag: christianity

  • Choosing Right over Good

    At work today, we had a really interesting bible study session talking about letting our rights go, for the sake of the Christian gospel. It’s not a popular topic out of Christian circles, but in the recent year, I think there’s really been so much confusion over what Christianity really means and what it stands for.

    For one, it doesn’t force its way into people’s lives. Being a Christian isn’t about standing in the street screaming the name Jesus Christ and dancing to it. I get the meme of it, but in its practical application, I don’t read where Jesus told us to do that.

    It’s mainly about understanding of our lack of as humans, and to accept the help of someone bigger, namely God. Christians do believe God as the creator of the universe, and in our human freedom, we chose to go against God. There are so many options discussing human freedom, but in most cases today, we practically live with human freedom as our baseline. But our going against the Creator, it runs us into this competition: which human will rule over the rest? Which one decides their ways are supreme over the rest, and ought to be followed? The endless competition of it leads to everyone wanting to be king, in whichever way possible. But we’ll never be able to sort this out, because only the Creator can make a command decision over all creation. Then comes Jesus, who takes the form of a created being, but with the creation power and abilities of the Creator God. Proven through his miracles, and the prophecies of old, he does whatever the Creator can do, but doesn’t choose his way over the creator’s. Instead, he follows to the point of his eventual betrayal and death. As an act of atonement, the punishment humankind deserves is placed on him. He is brought back to life three days later, and as Christians we follow the rest of the teachings Jesus left with the disciples before his ascension into heaven. One of the key things is to live in a way acknowledging God the creator, and to not choose the human way of leading our own lives. The eternal life part comes before, when he atones for our sins, our wrong against the creator God.

    Now, which part of gives anyone a sense of entitlement often portrayed in modern day?

    Christians were known for the self sacrifice in the earlier years, and the hope for eternity when the rest of the world just saw emptiness and void. We knew there was something after this life because Jesus was our proof of it. Therefore, nothing would hurt us in this life, including the loss of our own lives, because it would all be in Jesus’ charge.

    It’s tough these days because everything doesn’t seem to speak this truth about Jesus’ Christians who would go out of their way for their neighbour, to any extent. Reading books like “The Life You Can Save”, written by an atheist, but has made me think more about self sacrificial care for the poor than any Christian author has so far. It’s not the same.

    I deeply enjoyed my discussion at work today, because of the deep dive into this. It’s what I hope to do with Through The Roof, and it’s what I stand for as a Christian. It’s a hard line to take, but I am happy to work on my journey to learn how to be more giving of myself, for the good of the gospel, and not for my rights.

    Perhaps its the idealism of a 35 year old, but I hope to keep it somehow, this deep knowing of Jesus and God.

  • Old Habits…

    I always end up buying things, or I end up doing things in a certain way that I might not necessarily think is the most effective or efficient. That doesn’t mean that they’re bad, but the mind or the body reverts to something that they’re used to. I don’t think it’s always a fair statement to say that they’re bad habits, but I think that a lot of the time, its just how we make sense of the things that we do instead. Maybe, there’s just a simpler way to approach things, and perhaps that’s an ideal approach. Then we learn that approach but after some time, it fades, and we go back to what we’re familiar with.

    The idea of getting better really comes from a Christian place, in my opinion. We have this idea of the hope of Christ, and the new creation that we become through our faith. But at the same time, we deal with the inner man and how he used to think and how he used to be. There’s a sense of freedom of that for sure. And then the ideal to work ahead for the new person, for a better, more heavenly kingdom mindset.

    But this mindset might not necessarily be what the rest of society thinks or expects. Society in itself is unsure of what it ought to be many times, but currently, I would say that I would much rather assume the bible as truth, than to revert to my regular person, or towards what society deems as ideal. An ideal society would be the one that I read about, not my dreamy ideas of peace, or my humanly warped sense of justice.

    And yet, these are things that I revert to sometimes…

  • Kanye’s Donda

    Let’s not talk about the audio, or how it sounds. Because even though I love Kanye, musically this album wasn’t anything ground breaking.

    But the album stands for a few things. It definitely stands as a voice for those who need help, from their ethnic backgrounds and upbringing. It also stands for his remembrance for his mother, his loved ones, and who God is to him as well. These things are clearly just stated out right, with little imagination.

    But that’s another thought process of what we would consider a lyrically strong album. I think Kanye knows what a lyrically deep song might looks like, he’s obviously done enough. But for some reason, repetition, and simplicity, is his current main message medium. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s a refrain idea. There’s a lot of ideas of why and how he would choose these ways of speaking.

    I’d like to reference Bieber’s Peaches – and how simple his approach was for most of the song. More than that, a number of artists are approaching that simple, short catchy chorus. It forms a earworm that just crawls through your internal melody for days. In that same way, until now, I still hear Kanye saying, “Junya Watanabe on my Wri!“ It’s not a super verse, but the way he did it, it’s really stuck on.

    At the same time, this album goes for another Christian hit. He’s expressing his Christian faith all over again, and pulling his friends in to be part of it too. It’s really something to get so many artists in to say that they’re willing to speak up outright about their sin and their struggles in their lives. I think it takes effort, especially because of what this means for someone in America to associate with mainstream Christianity. I don’t think the cultural identity of it matches the intended theology, but it lies as a close tie to tradition and conservative politics.

    ]These associations for liberal artists that are known to not follow conservative notions are a step in another direction. A direction where we wouldn’t really be comfortable with as a whole. I find that its a struggle, myself included, to agree with the idea of a Christendom again. I think society has moved beyond that, and it polarizes more than unites. But at the same time, there is the idea that it could happen. I am slightly encouraged by that, and at the same time very wary of what that implicates as a whole too.

    But at the end of the day, I think I could definitely chant along with the refrain “I’ll be honest, we all liars“. We all struggle with our faith, and our stands in one way or another. If we pretend that we’re all okay, and we’re not okay (see what I did there), it just becomes a hypocritical expression of what a Christian looks like.

    I hope that Kanye finds someone to walk with him. Someone who’s willing to take the words that Jesus said and lives them out. Not someone hiding behind theology or tradition, but someone who just wants to live rightly before God, no matter the persecution. Even if it means that the Church itself doesn’t agree with it. I really hope God will send someone to him, to help Kanye live a life closer to God. If Johnny Cash could do it, so could Kanye.

  • Abstraction

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    Untitled (Red) 1958 – Taken from the NGV Website
    How does Rothko make a Rothko? I was reading this and really processing. Would I cry if I stood long enough at a Rothko piece? I remember I was almost tearing at NGV when I saw the Rothko piece there, but that was from the pure happiness of actually seeing a Rothko piece.

    Did the abstraction miss its point, in the intended emotional response?

    On a return trip, however, I actually avoided the Rothko, for fear of dealing with an intended response from the artwork. It was as if the piece was standing there, asking me to express or read an expression from it. “How do I make you feel today?” I evaded the question, and sped ahead to another exhibit.

    Now, considering my somewhat cowardly response toward an artwork, I come to that question: Can my artwork produce a response? Being trained in visual communication, I would think that crying because you saw my work would mean a few things. One would be horrible use of color or typography. Another could be a hidden memory, awakened from the past.

    I ask this, perhaps because, I am rarely moved by art these days. My girlfriend would point this out to me clearly, as I speed through galleries, gathering as deep an impression of 20 seconds at most. I blame neither the quality of artwork, nor the artist’ in his or her thoughts, but that challenging question: “How do I make you feel today?”

    Would a Christian respond to art differently? During a local exhibition, I saw the scene of Christian and Jesuit martyrs in Japan. This gave me great thought, and I did pause for a lot longer than 20 seconds. The country I admired, sacrificing people of my religious beliefs and truths, for doing the very things that I do as my work. Would I be one of them?

    “How do I make you feel today?” Scared, terrified in fact.

    But I digress. This abstraction, the emotions felt without a clear imagery or reference. Just colors, textures, applied over surfaces. Emotions were poured into it, and yet, there is no obligation for the viewer to emote in response. Is that process of art abstract in itself?

    Despite all my ramblings and thought, I guess at the end of the day, my question in my artwork would be: “Could you feel anything today?” and if you do, then I hope I was not to blame for it. Artistic abstract expression, you’re not the one at fault. It was probably me.