RE: Interview Assignment
November 14, 2019 at 4:03 am
(This post was last modified: November 14, 2019 at 5:17 am by Belacqua.)
(November 14, 2019 at 12:21 am)Student Wrote:
- How would you describe your own religious background and church involvement?
Zero. I was raised completely without religion. I have never attended a church service, or even gone into a church, unless it was to look at the art and architecture.
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- How would you describe God?
If there is anything that should be called God, I'd say it would be along the lines of what Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite described. The source of being, the impassible origin of goodness and truth, the final cause of everything.
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- What do you think is important in life?
Peace, love, and understanding. Beauty.
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- What do you think it takes to be straightened out (or made right) with God?
I don't see how it would be possible to be "made right" with God. That would imply some state in which one is finished or perfected, and this could lead to the serious misunderstanding that one's own opinions just happen to be those of God, too. If you picture the kind of God that I described earlier, the goal would be to encourage peace, love as much as possible, seek to understand fully before passing judgement, and create as much beauty as possible.
But one must never assume that one is currently "right" with God and therefore one is not full of error, ill will, and deception. I think it's better to be extremely self-critical and just assume that being "right" with impassible perfection is not possible for us.
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- How would you describe Jesus?
The idea of Jesus as incarnation of the Logos is one of the most potent and challenging concepts invented by human beings. The question he poses -- "what would the reason and goodness of the universe do if it had to deal with human difficulties?" -- is an unsolvable question which Christians would do well to keep in mind, in my opinion. But the fact that the Logos is beyond human knowledge also means that we can never flatter ourselves into thinking that our own preferences reflect that of the Logos.
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- What are your thoughts about churches today?
There is an enormous variety. Like all human institutions, they seem to be failing badly because the values of capitalism, American-style anti-intellectualism, and self-love are far easier to settle into than the real challenges of the New Testament.
