If your Jedi Mind Tricks don't work, use the lightsaber

Where to begin …

Superficial updates

The Dark Knight - Go see it, it isn’t overly ‘scary’ but it is very dark and the late Heath Ledger may have gone insane from doing this role.

Two week break - Will be making a couple of trips to San Diego to see my fam while the fam is on vacation. But it won’t be much of a break.

I’m moving up to Paso Robles sometime shortly after Sept 1 (My last day of living in my apartment is Sept 6th. *sigh*) So in a way … last call.

Here is the point where I pull my really big hammer out.

I still don’t know where to begin, so I’ll just say that the hammer is out and I’m talking about Creeds class. In short I think I would have liked the ‘planned’ material if the ‘planned’ material had actually been covered. The unplanned material however was as controversial as it was uninformed. What I saw and heard and experienced was … well lets just say I’m not happy.

Issue 1: Homosexuality - Right on the heels of the Presbyterian General Assembly (that I heard was not very orderly), we of course have to talk about the proposed Constitutional and Creedal changes, as a point of concession we can talk about the creedal ‘adjustment’ but the Constitutional changes and the other stuff that is related to the issue was more a waste of my time than anything. We had been talking about it for about a month since before GA and will continue to talk about it for the next year as the votes come in. Yes it is a big issue, but it is also a dead horse, I really don’t want to hear your opinion. At this point opinions I will listen to are votes cast one way or another. As clarification I will listen to you if you are a friend and we are able to discuss, but I think I’m not far off when I say that all of my friends are a little sick of it. Moving on …

Issue 2: Gifting and Movement of the Holy Spirit - I think I’ll back into this slow by saying that this is a dangerous and often perilous mire of quicksand. A little background on me: I got an intellectual instruction to the Holy Spirit while I was in college, where the college group I was attending did a 15 week summer series on the Holy Spirit. This was in a Calvary Chapel context and I very much had walked away from my Presbyterian roots, but they were there, I just didn’t realize it. From that I have continued to pray and ask for God’s guidance and wisdom as I use what I consider to be some of my own gifts.

We opened with discussion on Lakeland Church and Todd Bentley’s revivals going on in Florida. We had a Pentecostal prophet come in and do his thing. We had Presbyterian pastor come in who lost his job and sparked the General Assembly to look into how the Holy Spirit works and to give guidance to the denomination about how they function in a reformed understanding. And then of course we have our professor’s input. Under this were numerous articles being transferred on the ‘black market email’ that showed a different side of the Lakeland issue, the prophet sticking his foot in his mouth (outside of class), and a sense of existential dread would form when the professor would begin to smile a Holy Spirit Smile (TM). The Presbyterian pastor did right by the class and I hope to build a friendship there before he reaches the point where he passes on.

I’m not going to go into detail about the specific things said in class but lets talk a little about … what do I want to call this … ‘selective disclosure’ … It wasn’t until the last day of class that the other side of the Lakeland Church (ie the ‘horror’ stories) were even discussed and only because they were brought up by one of the … shall we say inner six. (I would have done it but I know better than to speak out in raw anger as I only stick my foot in my own mouth. Btw we need a name for that group … srsly.) However our professor simply deflected the issue by saying ‘Of course there will be counter points to something like this, you just have to decide for yourself’ … to which I want to ask, how can we make that decision unless we are given all the details. And you could tell the weak minded peons that did not have Jedi skills to resist the Mind Trick. (This is not the movement of the Holy Spirit you are looking for.)

* deep breath *

I heard it said once that a person once had a preference for praying spontaneously in front of a congregation during worship and often asked why people wrote out prayers. The person said that ‘the Spirit would move when he got up to the podium/lectern/microphone and that the concerns would just come.’ One person who enjoyed writing prayers was confronted by the Spirit prayer person, and the response to the questioning was another question: ‘Are you saying that the Holy Spirit can’t move through the use of ink and paper? Because I have a Bible that says otherwise.’

1Cor 14 talks about how the Holy Spirit functions in a sense of order and functionality and not out of disorder. I felt lots of disorder in this class and in some of the stories that I read about Lakeland. The only sense of order was in the Presbyterian Pastor … and he is the one without a ‘job’ … funny.