Ethan Renoe's Blog, page 8

The Building, part 3

…But on Sunday, everything changed.

I happened to be walking through the town, just a few blocks from the Krimm building. Suddenly, there was a deafening crack that ripped through the air. It was as loud as a bomb, but sounded like rocks being torn apart. I looked toward the building–the location of the sound–and saw that it was falling apart!

Thousands of cracks ran down the sides of the building and chunks were falling off of it, crashing to the ground. It was like the hatching of an egg, with the outer shell of the building explosively falling apart. But when each piece hit the ground, it was surrounded by a cloud of dust and essentially vaporized. It was as if the outer shell of the building were made of mere dust that was barely held together. As the outer wall of the building fell apart, it seemed to cause little, if any damage when it struck the ground. Bits even fell on cars and people, but there was no damage from where I could see. They all seemed fine.

I had become distracted watching the pieces of the shell fall to the ground, throwing up massive clouds of dust, that I didn’t notice what was being revealed. There was another building nested inside the shell. It appeared somewhat normal, except that instead of windows, there were what appeared to be massive eyeballs. There were hundreds of them. It was as if someone took an ordinary skyscraper and replaced every window with an eyeball. They were moving constantly, glancing all over the city, watching everything.

From the central and tall vantage point, it felt like the eyes could see everywhere in the city. The eyes could see almost everywhere, and they were scanning every block, every street, every person. It felt like they could see into every single room in the city. There were hundreds if not thousands of eyes, scanning all over the entire city. I was too stunned by this strange sight to move or look away.

Suddenly I felt a hand grab my arm. I jerked my head away from the building to realize it was one of Krimm’s minions grabbing me.

Before I could speak or ask why he was grabbing me, he firmly pulled my arm to walk with him and said, “Let’s keep moving. No need to look at Mr. Krimm.”

He had a firm grip on my arm for nearly a full block, walking me along briskly until I was more removed from the tower. I could still see it over the top of some buildings, but didn’t have a direct view of it. I felt the eyes on me. The minion said nothing else, he just released my arm with a little shove and returned to his post.

I had no idea what to think and wandered home in a daze.

For the next few days, I was too nervous to leave my house for fear that the eyes would see me again and assume I was doing something wrong. I didn’t want to feel another firm grip on my arm and be moved along, or worse, ‘arrested,’ as I had seen many people be lately. People were confused by this, because as far as we knew, Krimm was not the law. He was not associated with the government, yet he was arresting people as if he had the authority.

I heard one story from a neighbor that the police had resisted Krimm’s minions, and from his tower he saw this, and sent more of his minions as reinforcements until there were so many of them they overwhelmed the police. All the officers were bound with some strange type of rope and taken into the tower. We don’t know what happened to them after that.

We didn’t hear of any other instances of the police pushing back against Krimm. Perhaps they simply acknowledged that he had bested them, that his forces were stronger than theirs. He had the advantage of surveillance; he could instantly see everything happening in the city and direct his men to wherever they needed to go in an instant. The police had nothing close to this, just their walkie talkies.

Krimm’s eyes had won him the city.

Over the following months, more and more people gave in to the power of the building. It was futile to push back against him. You couldn’t get within a mile of the tower without its countless eyes seeing you, and sending men to come stop you.

Fewer people walked on the streets. I heard rumors about tunnels being utilized by citizens to get around more effectively. This lasted a few weeks until Krimm’s men began patrolling them as well. And a little while after that, eyes were installed along all the tunnels as well. Rather than cables or wires connecting them, they seemed to be connected to the tower with the same organic-looking rope that the police had been bound with. It was like a giant vein or organ. The red rope ran along the top of the tunnels, and all tunnels eventually made their way back to the tower.

Even under the earth, Krimm could see everything.

It seemed that this is how life would be from now on, until I had an idea.

to be continued…

e

Day 10 of 100 blogs

The post The Building, part 3 appeared first on ethan renoe.

The Building, part 2

More months passed and everyone agreed that the building had shot up far faster than any other before it. Were they bypassing building and safety codes? All we could do was speculate. When the newspaper ran a story about it, it told us what we already knew (that the building was going up fast) mixed with some pundit’s speculation about it. Krimm hadn’t made any statements since the first one.

The building seemed to be nearing completion, as the rough, windowless adobe-looking material looked like it would curve to a domed close at the top. It truly looked like a pale finger pointing at the heavens. All that was left was the very tip of the finger. It looked like the construction was a mere week away from closing the finger and dubbing the building completed.

I kept a closer eye on the building the next few days. That Tuesday on my morning commute, it looked like the top of the finger had come together. On my evening commute, I saw a crowd gathering at the base of the building, right at the door where I had tried to look in months earlier.

Of course, I couldn’t help myself and approached the outside of the crowd. People were muttering about Nephilous Krimm making a speech to mark the completion of his tower. It couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes before the crowd fell silent and a figure came out through the glass door.

He stood on a small podium and raised a hand, both to greet and quiet us. He looked just like any other business man, with a suit and tie. His hair looked flawlessly combed and neat. He stood confident and tall. He smiled deep into his cheeks and seemed like he could win over any person standing in this crowd.

“Hello everyone,” he began. The city street was utterly silent. A baby cried two blocks away.

“Thank you for coming to the grand opening of my building. It will be some magnificent work we will accomplish here. If anyone would like to work with me, simply quit your job and be here tomorrow morning at 8am and we will begin. Thank you.” He waved again to the crowd and turned and walked back through the front door.

The crowd remained silent for a full minute, wanting there to be more. More information, more details. Perhaps even more of the intriguing presence of Mr. Krimm himself. Once the chatter of the crowd started again, I overheard numerous people near me say that they were going to inform their boss that they quit, and they’d show up here tomorrow at 8am. Krimm had that sort of sway over people, to engage them and win them over to himself.

I walked home. As much as my curiosity wanted to drop everything and show up tomorrow morning, I couldn’t justify leaving everything behind just for one man I’d heard speak once.

The following days, I heard about the swarms of men who showed up that morning to work for the mysterious Nephilous Krimm. I saw photos in the paper of the hundreds of men gathered outside the front door of the windowless building. The report said that not a single person was turned away for a job. Every single one was welcomed in. The paper did mention, however, that they were unable to attain a comment from anyone who had gone to work for him. It was as if they went in but didn’t come out.

As I passed by the building on my daily commute, I always glanced over toward the building and saw small crowds of people. Some were simply observing, others were trying to get in to work for Krimm.

Over the following weeks, the hubbub died down around the building, as there were no new updates. The tall, pale finger of the skyscraper sat there, looking dead except for the small crowd always congregated at its base. Nephilous Krimm was silent and the newspapers couldn’t come up with anything noteworthy to say about it that hadn’t been said before.

Then one Thursday, the men appeared in the streets. There were hundreds of them wearing strange uniforms, unlike anything I’d seen before.

Compilation of photos of the men.

They seemed to endlessly stream out from Krimm’s building and spread throughout the entire city. They walked with intention, splitting off in groups to walk to every part of the city. Within a few hours that Thursday, they were posted everywhere in the city. You couldn’t walk more than two blocks without seeing at least one group of them, monitoring and patrolling the streets.

They didn’t do anything, however. They didn’t say anything or interact with anyone on the streets. They didn’t seem particularly interested in enforcing anything. In fact, if it weren’t for their uniforms and masks, they would have looked just like any normal person going for a stroll through the city streets. Initially there was a lot of confusion and intrigue over these groups of uniformed men walking the streets in their strange outfits, but they didn’t bother anyone. And of course, there is no law against wearing matching clothes in big groups and wandering the streets of our city.

The newspapers were abuzz with speculation and theories about the men. None of them would answer any questions from reporters or civilians. They didn’t even seem to speak to one another, but it was hard to tell because of the masks they wore. So all that was left for us was more speculation.

By Saturday we had nearly gotten used to the guards’ presence posted all over the city. They didn’t bother anyone, or really do much of anything.

But on Sunday, everything changed.

to be continued…

e

100 days of blogs, day 9

The post The Building, part 2 appeared first on ethan renoe.

The Building, part 1

The building went up faster than any before it ever had. The permits sliced through the red tape of the city like a knife through butter. Zoning and construction permits passed effortlessly through the various hands of bureaucratic offices that normally hold up construction for months, yet the ground was broken on this building within days.

Initially, no one realized what an amazing feat this was. To the outside eyes like mine, it seemed like nothing more than another skyscraper being put up in a city riddled with them.

It wasn’t until a few weeks into the build that word began to get out about the mysterious new addition to the city, and the one behind the project. The news registers named the man behind the project as one Mr. Nephilous Krimm. Once the news broke the stories about the man and his skyscraper, people became even more curious both about him and his building. Yet, despite the headlines, everyone I talked to was unable to find anything about him at all. He seemed to not exist, according to city records and newspapers and hospital birth certificates. I had one friend who contacted nearly every hospital in the state to find information about the man. But he came up empty.

Most people had no idea what he looked like either. Unlike other wealthy businessmen, Mr. Krimm was not featured posing with a shovel at the groundbreaking, or in front of the construction machines as the work began. One construction worker I talked to claims to have seen his leg and shoe as he turned around a corner near the construction site, but didn’t see his face.

He famously refused interviews, though his responses were polite and intriguing. To one newspaper he wrote,

“Thank you for thinking of me and my project, but I am inextricably bound to my work and unable to peel myself away from this very important work. Please feel free to write about the tower as it rises, but I am unable to provide further comment on the situation. I wish you all the best. NK”

The paper ran his response and of course the town went wild, and his ominous language only made us all more intrigued.

For the next few months, the tower went up with just as little information being released. After the first couple floors were completed, however, something became glaringly obvious that set this building apart from every other skyscraper in the city, if not the world: There were no windows. It was a solid wall. It was beige and seemed unfinished or hasty, like an adobe texture. It did not seem like the sort of exterior for a skyscraper created by a mysterious, wealthy hermit.

The tower rose higher and higher as the months went on. It began to look like a ragged finger rising up in the midst of the city, pointing at the sky. If it was a finger, it looked like it was accusing the sky of something, or perhaps rising in a triumphal victory gesture.

By winter it was dozens of stories high, approaching the heights of some of the highest buildings in the city. It still looked crazy, without a single window visible.

One day I tried to get close and ask one of the workers some questions. I paced the sidewalk leading up to the odd building and tried to catch someone dressed like a worker going in or coming out. But there was no one. Attempting not to look conspicuous, I paced around the block a few times. Eventually a full hour passed and I hadn’t seen anyone come in or go out of the spot that looked like the front door. I decided to walk right up to it and look through the window.

I crossed the street and turned on the sidewalk toward it. Right as I got close to the glass door, someone came out of it. It was a short, middle-aged woman. She marched right up to me and, not very politely, asked if she could help me.

I was stunned. I hadn’t prepared to explain why I was snooping around the building. She could clearly see my confusion and reached up to touch my forearm.

“Perhaps it’s better if you walk away and come back another day.” She offered me a joyless smile and abruptly turned and walked back into the doors. From where I stood, the doors appeared to be glass, yet I couldn’t see a single thing on the other side of them. They were highly reflective and perhaps it was dark on the inside? It was impossible to see anything inside, but I dared not get closer to them and try to peer in.

to be continued…

e

100 Days of blogs, Day 8

The post The Building, part 1 appeared first on ethan renoe.

There is no such thing as ‘theoretical theology.’

In the world of science, you can make an entire career out of theoretical physics, which differs from experimental physics. The latter involves actually, you know, experimenting with things to test their application and accuracy in the real world. Meanwhile, theoretical physicists casts conjecture so far up the ladder of the abstract that it exists more in the mind and discourse of the university than in reality. 

Visit lofty academic institutions and you may still see the quote from an early 1900’s German researcher that reads, “Well yes, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?” 

So many things that happen in the world today go against every single ounce of data that predicts otherwise, yet the world still operates the way it does. For example, people still buy lottery tickets en masse despite having a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning. Some refer to this human tendency to operate against the predicted laws of the world as Homo Economicus. 

We can apply that lens to so many areas today, from economics to social and political dynamics, but that’s for another day.

The problem is, when it comes to the area of theology, we often treat it more like a theoretical physics equation than something that masks itself onto every single molecule of our universe. 

When we discuss theology and God, we do not discuss theory or logic; we discuss reality itself, held in the hands of a very real God. 

This attitude and posture toward theology is called prolegomena, or ‘first things.’ They’re the sort of things that must be discussed and addressed before one gets into the actual discussion of the theological issues. It was the first two weeks of my systematic theology courses. It’s like a slap on the cheek, or a bucket of water to the face that says Wake up! Realize what and Who you’re talking about before you open your fat little mouth! This is no theory that you’re debating; it’s the Ground of Existence Himself!

The Bible repeatedly tells us this same thing. 

“Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.” -Ecclesiastes 5:2

“Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues.” -Proverbs 17:28

“Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” -Ice Cube

You can have theoretical physics but there is no such thing as theoretical theology. 

God is not a theory.
Reality is not a theory. 

Now, this isn’t to say that there are no debates and intricate conversations and all sorts of things to dig into when discussing theology. Rather, it’s an invitation to remember that, in the words of Helmut Thielicke, theology is done in the second person, not the third. What he means is, we can talk about God like a distant, “He is over there doing his thing in heaven” type of voice, or we can speak using “you” language, like God is in the room with us. 

Because, spoiler alert, He is.

e

Day 7 of 100 Blogs

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Midnight with Grandpa

This is a moment I’ll remember.

It’s just after midnight Pennsylvania time, but my body is still set to Colorado’s. Everyone else has gone to bed, including Grandpa, whose bed is out in their living room. He’s beside me and every few seconds, his arms and legs kick and jerk. His head is where it’s been for months: Falling hard to the right.

Sometimes I think he’s woken up and is reaching for something, but when I look over, it’s just the Parkinson’s dragging his hand down to his thigh slowly, then quickly pulling it back up.

Parkinson’s is absolutely a demon.

On the TV, a young(ish) Jimmy Swaggart is muted, but he’s preaching and singing and sweating. Especially sweating. It’s his pre-scandal era and he’s preaching the gospel (I’m assuming…no subtitles) like there’s no tomorrow and as a pre-millennialist, he really thinks there may NOT be a tomorrow!

Grandpa’s constant twitching makes the young, fit me tired, just thinking about it. He hasn’t stopped since I arrived, and he won’t stop until the end.

Please, God, let his bones rest.
Let him find Your goodness in the land of the living.
Well, one or the other.

There seems to be an element of the disease that takes the human apart piece by piece and replaces him with this quivering body, and at some point, you’re supposed to realize, this isn’t him anymore…this isn’t my grandpa, like some sort of sick game. And I’m wondering if we’ve past that point and need to realize it.

Because every now and then, grandpa has a quick quip, some flash of the hilarious man he was, but for the most part he mumbles incoherently, sleeps, or talks about the naked people on the roof of his neighbor’s house out the window who no one else can see.

–

Next day, saying goodbye, I kissed him on his cheek which was bristly. He hadn’t been shaved in a few days. Dandruff fell generously from his thin hair. Supposedly hair keeps growing for a week after you die.

I felt the urge to say something significant as I said goodbye, but the only things I could think of were a jumbled: “Goodbye, I’ll see you later [which I really tripped over, realizing that I probably won’t], and I love you.”

What else are you supposed to say?
What are the words that can once and for all seal in the life of a human being, and your relationship with them?

“Good job, you did it.” ??
What?

There are no right words.

There is mainly the memory of the sensation of his rough whiskers on my lips as I kissed him on the cheek and then stood to leave. There are only the first 33 years of my life, through which he was an ever-present loving grandpa, sending his support from Pennsylvania.

[Insert some cliché about how those 33 years matter more than the final minutes.]

–

On my way to the airport, my parents drove me past the facility where he will be moved to tomorrow. It’s atop a pleasant green hill: a nice old red brick building that used to be an orphanage. Ironically, over the entrance, it read ODD FELLOWS OF HARRISBURG. Seems fitting for my goofy old grandpa. I think he’d appreciate holing up with his fellow Odd Fellows.

My dad pointed out the window of his room, which faced the airport, and from it you can see the planes coming and going. Not a bad place for one’s world to end: watching the rest of it coming and going in a busy and infinite wheel of commotion.

It reminded me that death is quiet.

The closer one gets to death, the more your world winds down. It’s quieter and stiller.

Naturally, people often draw near to death with screams or flames or violence, but in the aftermath, everything is still and silent. It’s ironic to me that death metal is a genre, as death is nothing but silence and stillness. It should be called life metal, as life is energetic and vibrant and screaming to be witnessed.

And people whose hands work with death are normally more quiet as well. 
I haven’t met a class clown who became an undertaker.

e

100 days of blogs, day 7.

The post Midnight with Grandpa appeared first on ethan renoe.

7/27/2024, 4:45am, descending into Harrisburg

I made the mistake of thinking about you today on the airplane, on the wing of that same place I’ve always thought of her: My lover, the future.

When I was in high school, I told my friend Katie that the one you should marry is the one you can’t figure out all the way. I categorized people back then. I figured that, she’s a cheerleader and he’s a jock, and he’s a video games and math kind of guy, but there will be one girl who is always a mystery to me, and with her I will always be enamored.

Nowadays, I don’t think anyone is quite possible to figure out down to their bones, yet some still try to come off as simple. They try to blend in or just follow the popular trends, not wanting to stand out from the herd. Some are more complicated or complex than others, yes, but every one of us is a well of fog. Each of us has endless music inside of us, but we’re just singing different songs.

I stared at the blinking lights on the wing while Philadelphia slipped beneath us. I barely noticed the turbulence as I watched Past Lives, which stirred up all sorts of feelings within me. It reminded me of Monica, my middle school sweetheart, and explored what could have been, reflecting on it all these decades later.

Five years ago, I told her I couldn’t hear what she said to me out on that pier on Cape Cod through the noise of all the years.

Now I don’t know if I can even sit up straight beneath the weight of them.

Childhood is a weight you carry for the rest of your life because it calls out, reminding you of just how good and pure it can be. The only thing that grows stronger is the longing to go back to it.

It used to be a longing for the future but now it’s a longing for that pier, her coat, that meteor shower over the warm summer waves.

I can’t stand up beneath the weight of them, Monica. The years get heavier and heavier, and now I understand why the elderly curl up: they’re carrying the most.

Regret and imagination are twin curses. The amount of time I’ve given over to wondering what life would have been like with her is ludicrous. It’s this thing that’s so close to being real that you can reach out and touch it, like a demon perched on the wing of this airplane. Just have to break some glass to get him, but is it worth the risk?

I suppose I’d break my arm for that life; for how pure I imagine it to be.

It’s tainted by the stain of nostalgia, meaning the skin folds and bad smells and disappointment — even the longing, because I don’t imagine myself wanting to be anywhere else when I recall those days — are washed out of it.

But maybe the life moving toward me is better. It’s realer, so by philosophical necessity, it’s better. Existence is better than nonexistence, but it’s still fun to play with some imaginary fire.

These sleep-deprived poems are the sort of language AI can never replicate…unless we can also deprive them of sleep, then perhaps they can be persuaded to burst into some ‘part-felt’ prose.

“Write drunk, edit sober,” as they say, although you can substitute alcohol for sleep deprivation while traveling.

Am I tired, drunk, or just a wicked good writer? (a and maybe c)

How do you know you grew up by the coast? “Wicked.” It was a stamp of ownership, and everyone needed the Cape to own them. Because then you were in. Then you were one of us.

But I never said wicked, and perhaps that’s why I always felt like an outsider. Perhaps that’s why I still do: A refusal to participate in the linguistic games of the local congregants.

-abrupt end because we landed-

e

Day 6 of 100 days of blogs.

The post 7/27/2024, 4:45am, descending into Harrisburg appeared first on ethan renoe.

“God is so disappointed in me.” 7 Common Lies about God, part 3

Well it’s easy to see why this one is so prevalent. Who hasn’t felt like they disappointed God and let Him down, and now the Ground of Existence is bummed about the way that you are?

You know who else felt this way? Pretty much everyone. But specifically, the first two people in the Bible, Adam and Eve. It seems from the limited text that the first emotion they felt after disobeying God was shame. It’s very important to notice that in Genesis 3, God doesn’t come down and shame them; they do that to themselves. They are the ones who run and hide, while God (who already knows everything) comes down to walk the garden with them. 

Then, God asks them questions and they point fingers. 

Yes, there was a price for their disobedience, but the effects are amplified by two things, as I see it: Their shame and their dishonesty. 

They felt guilty, they became aware that they were naked, and they hid themselves. Then they shifted blame as soon as God started asking them questions. 

It hints to me that, if we can get a handle on our shame, dig down into why we feel the way we do, then we will feel closer to God (But you won’t actually be closer to God…because He’s everywhere…and already very near to you…it’s only us who do the running from Him…).

And that if we are able to be honest about ourselves, our shortcomings, our screwups, et al., we will also heal toward God. Perhaps this is why the fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous (and all the 12-step addiction recovery programs) is to make a scathingly honest moral inventory of our shortcomings. There is power in being radically honest with ourselves and coming to see ourselves, and God, more honestly.

We will usually come to find that we are more disappointed in ourselves than God is, and that God hasn’t gone anywhere.

e

100 Days of blogs, day 5

The post “God is so disappointed in me.” 7 Common Lies about God, part 3 appeared first on ethan renoe.

“God is vehemently making sure you get your theology right.” Top 7 Lies I’ve heard about God, part 2

Francis Chan summed this up so well years ago, as he often does. He gave an analogy with his children. He said (as best I can remember): “Imagine I ask my daughter to clean her room. I don’t want her to come back and tell me that she’s memorized what I said, analyzed it, and translated it into Greek and Hebrew, where she did word studies on each of the words. I want her to clean her room!”

This is how many people (at least in a lot of circles I’m in) treat theology and God, as if it’s a puzzle you have to get right, or else you’re in big trouble.

Now, this may seem like I’m saying the opposite of part 1. That it doesn’t matter what you believe about God, just vibe with Him and you’re chill. But that’s not quite what I’m saying. Let me attack it from a few angles.

My theology has morphed over time for as long as I’ve been a Christian.

I was fortunate enough to be born and raised in a Christian home, so I would have called myself a Christian my whole life. I suspect that, had I died at any point, I would have gone to be with God. How can I believe some differing things now than I did ten years ago, and still presume that I’d go to be with Christ if I were to die today, or ten years ago?

Because knowledge is not the  most  important part.

Paul and Jesus both talk about how God has revealed things to children that He has hidden from the wise and educated. There is clearly some part of the gospel message that is as simple as receiving love like a little kid does. It doesn’t stop there of course, but that’s one of, if not the most important part.

Even the demons have knowledge.

James 2 as well as the Gospel of Mark show that demons have a functional and somewhat accurate knowledge of God, yet of course they are not saved.

If we were saved by how much we knew, then I’d be far more sanctified than all you suckers. Of course, I’m not, and we are not. But if that were the case, every Christian would be vying to go to seminary and learn and fill their brains and get their theology down to a science.

The founder of Denver Seminary, Vernon Grounds, said that “As the island of my knowledge grows, so too does the shoreline of my questioning.”

I have certainly found this to be true. The more I study and learn and listen to lectures, the more I’m finding that there are even new types of questions I can ask! Again, this isn’t making me more saved than I was when I was ten, but it is making me better at my job, at answering peoples’ big questions, and so on. And not everyone is called to that.

So what does God call us to then?

The instructions are simple. Jesus answered the question of what is the greatest commandment quite plainly: Love God and love others. And the more you live, you realize that they really aren’t two commands but one.

Loving God comes from intentional time ‘wasted’ with Him, as Brennan Manning called it. It comes from reading His Word, but not as an end in itself — but in pursuit of God, the person. The same way you don’t study a love letter in order to become an expert on the letter, but on its author. (remember though, that when you really love someone, you are motivated to get to know them better! That should be our motivation for learning theology.)

Loving God equips us to better love others. And when we go out from our quiet place with our Creator, we should feel more full and ready. And of course, going out and loving every human made in God’s image (aka, everyone) is simply another form of loving on God.

Just like the daughter who is told to clean her room, we are meant to simply obey this one (one and a half?) command. Everything else can fall into place eventually.

For the theology nerds:

I had a seminary professor who said that, in 40 years of teaching theology, he never once called someone a heretic. It’s a strong word and it’s often used to pejoratively dismiss someone who comes with a different perspective than us. Sure, they may be wrong, but we are all pursuing truth and knowledge together. So rather than label someone a heretic and throw them out and dismiss them, why not dig into the conversation as if you’re on the same team? As if you’re pursuing the same thing?

Maybe you’re more picky with your theology than God is. After all, the Pharisees thought they had the whole Torah figured out and Jesus was hardest on them. And they did have the whole Tanakh memorized…doubt y’all can say the same….

Let’s prioritize love and obedience, with theology as a close second. Or third. Or fourth. It’s up there, I’m just not sure where haha!

e

100 days straight of blogging, day 4!

The post “God is vehemently making sure you get your theology right.” Top 7 Lies I’ve heard about God, part 2 appeared first on ethan renoe.

“God is whatever you think God is.” Top 7 Lies I’ve heard about God, part 1

There are few things in the world that everyone thinks they are experts on, but God and spiritual things is certainly one of them. Everyone, regardless of whether or not they can define the term ‘theology,’ thinks they are an expert on the matter and know better than anyone who has studied it academically for a decade.

So I’ve been thinking through several of the things I’ve heard people casually say, often without much thought, about the divine, and share my own two cents about the matter.

God is whatever you think God is.

I mean, the people who say this don’t even believe it. The classic example is, Hitler had some conception of what God is, and none of us would say that it was accurate or even permissible. We don’t want that God, because it’s a bad version of God.

Well, who defines what type of God is good or bad? Humans? If so, they have to acknowledge that they have a version of God which they believe is better than someone else’s, even if that person is Hitler.

In fact, they can’t even define right and wrong without appealing to some sort of universal higher authority on these matters (this is called deontological ethics; ethics that come from an authority higher than humans).

Like, who says that bodily autonomy is a universal good? Who says that all people are made equal? Surely we don’t all serve and contribute equally to society… That’s a dangerous path to go down.

You cannot just blanketly state that all spiritual beliefs are equal, because this is simply not true — even those who say it don’t believe it. They mean all statements about God which they approve of are true. Some religious beliefs lead to violence and genocide; others to selflessness and loving sacrifice. Therefore, the ideas embedded in these various spiritual belief systems must not be alike or equal. Each requires its own investigation and analysis.

This means that some ideas about God are more right and others are more wrong. The question is, how does one go about finding out which ideas are which? Because if some are more true, shouldn’t we strive to find out which beliefs are most true?

(You’ll notice I haven’t argued for one particular religion over another; I’m simply pointing out that the statement itself is empirically false. That someone making the statement needs to conduct some further investigation into the varying religious beliefs and find that indeed, not all theologies are created equally.)

Even the statement that all beliefs are right is a truth statement. One who says this is supposing it to be true before moving on. Someone who says they are wrong about this (i.e., me), inherently disproves their point. Christianity, for example, says that ‘If we are true, then many other religions are false, and vice-versa.’ There is no way that all these systems competing to be True (with a capital T) can all be right. Some must be less true than the others, and some more.

But one thing we can conclude: They cannot all be right.

So, no, God is not whatever you think God is. You can think false things about God — we all have, many times a day.

I believe that when I think of God as angry and disappointed in me, I’m believing a lie about God. I should adjust my thinking about God if I’m holding onto something that is false about Him, and it’s hurting me and others.

Or if I were to believe “God doesn’t care about me anymore,” I would be saying something about God that’s false.

On the flip side, we are able to say things about God that are true:
God is good, even when we can’t see the goodness.
God hates disunity and death.
God created everything.

A big chunk of theology is figuring out which statements about God are true and which are not. It may sound simple from the above examples, but once you get down into the nitty-gritty, it’s anything but.

Stay tuned for Number 2!

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13 ideas for my next blog post

Well it’s that time of the decade again: I have decided to write a blog post every day for, hopefully, at least, 100 days in a row. My friends are keeping me accountable and if I fail, the punishment is that they will be mildly disappointed in me for a very short period of time. So to kick off this round of “Why Did I Do This To Myself Again?”, I’m going rapid fire the first 13 ideas for blog posts, without thought, and without editing. Partly because I have no time to write a proper post, part because I want to turn my brain off and squeeze out some ideas, and part because I love you all.

So here goes.

This.Summaries of all my books since most of you probably have no idea and I have consistently done a horrible job of advertising and describing them.Kissing techniques and good and bad things to practice on, for the chronically alone.Top 9 lies I hear people say about God. Or the Bible? Jesus?Advice my 33-year-old self would give to my 32-year-old self.Several people have asked for descriptions of all my tattoos (or maybe they’re just hoping for sultry pics), and I’ve never done it. Or it could be 74 separate posts…My top 7 songs of 2024 so far (don’t ask where I’m coming up with these numbers. Except the 74, because I have that many tattoos).My top 3,108 films of 2024 so far.Why I want to leave Colorado so badly and leave it to the Millennials who move here for a year and proceed to also move on to better locales.How to cook frozen meals for one.8 ideas for a short film I could realistically make.Where does suffering come from if God is good? (classic theophany, let’s solve it!)Who I’m voting for.

Which ones do you want to read?? Let me know!!

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