Brave Sir Tickletext
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14 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - The Supremes rule on &... · 0 replies · +1 points
14 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - The Supremes rule on &... · 0 replies · +1 points
I have far more tolerance for vulgarity (references to bodily functions, etc.) than profanity (vain naming, invocations of divine wrath). As the word vulgar implies, objections to vulgarity were once driven by class-based aversions to the low, filthy lives of the common people. There are questions of taste and stewardship of language of course, and so vulgarity should probably be avoided for the most part. But profanity is utterly indefensible from a Christian perspective.
The Christian perspective is in a real cultural minority. In olden days, the days of yore, that is, the profane words were the real taboo. In fact they were outlawed for some time, and you can look in the OED and find a whole array of substitute swear words that arose in the seventeenth century, such as "zounds" and "zooks" (referring to Christ's wounds and "hooks" or wounded hands). Today the obscene is a much stronger taboo. Particularly sexual obscenity. Especially the f-word. If you get really angry and you want to shock or verbally maim someone you don't damn them, you f-word them. Sex today is not just any noun but the name of a god. And that god, as the f-word suggests, is violent in will, dominating, and power-hungry, and the people who exhale f-words so frequently pay fitting homage to that god with remarkable religiosity.
14 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - Air Force One's j... · 0 replies · +2 points
14 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - Air Force One's j... · 2 replies · 0 points
14 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - "Vocation" v... · 1 reply · +1 points
14 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - "Vocation" v... · 2 replies · +1 points
Thanks to Dr. Veith for his continuing faithfulness in teaching about the rich doctrine of vocation.
15 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - Other doctrines of voc... · 1 reply · +1 points
But vocation acknowledges the flourishing--the shalom--of the neighbor as a legitimate check to the authority of choice. Vocations that prove deleterious to the health and well being of the neighbor are no vocations at all. But the same cannot be said of the career mindset, which is inherently choice-oriented. Vocation doesn't deny the role of choice, it just humbles it, redirects it.
15 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - Other doctrines of voc... · 1 reply · +1 points
The distinction I would make, FW, is that if it is possible for Christians to speak of "being true to one's self," then it would have be in the sense of "being true to the self God calls us to be." But that is not the usual language of modernity, of course.
Your view seems to be that without a conscious or implicit motive to serve one´s neighbor, that one´s vocation is not truly vocation
No, I would say that sometimes there may be motives, sometimes not. I wouldn't know how to draw a clear line in that respect, and even if I could I don't think I'd want to. The calling is the important thing.
15 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - Other doctrines of voc... · 5 replies · +1 points
But the word "career" is etymologically associated with roads, courses, chariot-paths, etc. Poets used to speak of the "career" of the sun in its course across the sky. This is how modernity generally conceives of work, as a choice of course, not a calling and a gift. The person who faces a career choice faces a crossroads of choices. A person usually discovers one's vocations as they naturally unfold through the talents that arise in relation to the people to whom one is called. But the criteria for making the right career choice and taking the right career path are self-originating, they are discovered by being true to oneself and one's desires (to speak the Hollywood argot). Because that is extremely vague, and because one's desires are in constant flux and contradiction, there has arisen a whole industry of incantatory-astrological magicians and paperback mountebanks who hawk the right "formula" or series of steps, which, if purchased and followed, will bring happiness and success in one's career choice.
Universities today are extremely career-oriented, of course. Like all the secular schools the Christian university I attended had a Career Center but no Vocation Center, nor was vocation taught in any substantive way. The phrase "revolutionize" is a cliche, but a strong and full articulation of vocation properly understood would truly transform the way we approach education. In the humanities, for instance, an understanding of art, literature, and criticism as vocational means of serving the neighbor would provide a compelling alternative to the dehumanizing, obscurantist tendencies of modern English departments.
15 years ago @ Cranach: The Blog of V... - "We Do Not Consid... · 0 replies · +1 points
If you wish to prove me wrong and try to persuade me, you could explain on what basis a person has the freedom as a Christian--not the right as a citizen, the freedom as a Christian--to verbally deride the President as a "bozo" and "0bama"?