Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Doesn't sound like most Christians I know.
 

it doesnt, does it toad?
the amish are beautiful. very sad story.

ot.... ER, I see on erics page you are listed as a bent back tulip? what does that mean?
 

Toad, you are right.

Tu, He explained it to me once but I didn't really understand it. It's a reference to a Beatles song, I think, and he means it to indicate that he thinks I'm confused (that is, I don't agree with him on much).

But I'm really not sure. :-)
 

I remembered a contraversy about the "Glas Onion" son on the White Album. So I wandered through the WWW until I found somthing that agreed with my memories.

According to a guy named John Marck:
"The bent back tulips were real tulips that were in flower arrangements in a restaurant known as Parkes in London. In these arrangements, the tulip petals were bend back so that you could see the obverse side as well as the stamen. When Lennon referred to them in this song, this is what he meant by "seeing how the other half lives.""

The Amish are an enigma of the the first order. They are a gated community of souls on the edge of suburban disorder. My name sake ancestors settled in Lancaster county with the Amish in the 1730s. They had come to America as a father and sons bereft of their families buried in the Palintine along the German/Swiss border. Religious freedom was their goal and yet as conservative as they were they did not go along with their neighbors, the Amish way of abandoment and isolation. So I have wondered about the Amish for some time. This current story of their Christian faith although true, is too simple.
 

He ment Glass Onion song
 

What do you mean, "too simple"?
 

"Too Simple" on many levels.
For starters, the killer was their "Milkman". In the Amish community they have precious little interaction with the "English" world. "English" being everybody not Amish. No radios, no TV's, no newspapers, no magazines etc.. So the one constant contact to the outside world is the Milkman. The guy, that come to the Amish "dairies" which about is every third farm, and picks up the milk in the wee hours of the morning. He is a major source of their news about the larger community and the world not Amish. What the "Milkman" said is transmitted around the during the next day. So the "Killer" was not Amish but he was one of the "closest" Englismen that the Amish have.
"Too simple" in that in the tight knit culture of the Amish it is a major sin and an act agsinst their community to do other than they are now doing regardless of what you as an individual might feel. You will follow along with the prescribed Christian way of the community and not show any deviation from that way what-so-ever. Individualism even in this extreme case of provocation is not allowed for even the childs closest kin. In short, it is the law of their world that they behave that way, not an individuals choice per se. (Yes there is a point of chosing the Amish way when a child is of age, but is it really? Abandon all you've known for that you do not know? not hardly.)

So, the story is too simple.

As Christ like as it seems, I would have to ask, is being a Christian being part of a culture or an informed individual choice?
 

I don't get it. How does the guy being the milkman prove your "too simple" theory? So, he was their milkman, so what? He knew, perhaps better than most non-Amish, their schedules, their weaknesses, had their trust...how does that make it "too simple"? To me, it just makes it "more evil".

Secondly, are you saying no one has any choice? That we are all just products of our environment, so to speak, or that the Amish have just upped the brainwashing a notch?

How very sad! Even sadder, I think you have totally missed the point of the message of their faith, which I thought was so poignantly clear.

--Chandler
 

Re, "I would have to ask, is being a Christian being part of a culture or an informed individual choice?"

I would have to say that it is more of the former than the latter!

Away with this total reliance on "personal acceptance of Jesus as Lord and savior" as *the* standard definition of what it means to be a "Christian"!

Midieval "believers" -- those poor, sorry, illiterates -- either were carried up on the personal faith of their literate and thoughtful priests, or they were saved in spite of their ignorance and fear -- or they were lost to hell.

I don't believe they were lost to hell because they couldn't fricking read and and because they didn't have Bibles. What kind of God would doom them?

And that's another reason for the fundies of our own time to be dismissed as superstitionists and not people of faith!

And, Drlobojo, that's another reason for you to declare my own faith as too simple to allow for the possibility of heresy!

If you want to be saved, then you are saved! If you want to follow-accept-understand Jesus, then you are saved! If you know there is God, and there is yourself, and that you can do or think nothing to commune with the Creator, and that therefore the Creator must have done something to bridge that gap, then you are saved!

And I've got even more exclamation points: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your faith is just fuller, in the overall, infinite, eternal scheme of things, if you know Jesus and try to consciously follow Him.

BTW, Re: "You will follow along with the prescribed Christian way of the community and not show any deviation from that way what-so-ever." Last I heard, that was calld "denying yourself." Last I heard, that *was* The Way.
 

Thank you Chandler for a reason to elaborate on my statements.

Chandler said:
"I think you have totally missed the point of the message of their faith..."
I don't deny or miss the point of the message of "their faith". I am pointing out, as you yourself see it and state it, as "their" faith. It is a faith of a community, of a culture, not necessarily of individual choices. That is one of the things that makes it "not simple".

As for the Milkman, yes of course, that makes it far more of an evil. You have re-inforced my point haven't you. It was a greater evil, it was a special part of their world that betrayed them. Yet their cultural faith requires that they forgive him and help his family. That too is much more that the "simple story" that the media tells is it not? Because the Milkman is such a part of their world then the grace of forgiveness by the Amish means more than even the media portrays.

You see Chandler I did not attack the Amish, or their faith, I simply pointed out that this is more complex a story than is being told, and gave two differential reasons "why", out of many possible, in response to the question from ER.

I think my final question is legitimate: "As Christ like as it seems, I would have to ask, is being a Christian being part of a culture or an informed individual choice?"
To elaborate on the theological concept: Where does the individual fit in the Kingdom of Heaven? Where does a cultural community focused on "God" fit in the Kingdom of Heaven? What routes to God lead to God?

You see their faith thus: "...the point of the message of their faith, which I thought was so poignantly clear."

I don't see it as "poignately clear" and I don't see it as simple. But I do see its power and its complexity.

I heard one commentator exclaim that we should all be like the Amish. To follow that route would take 400 years of culture to get there and is a little too unrealistic is it not?
 

Erudite Redneck said...
Re,(drlobojo) "I would have to ask, is being a Christian being part of a culture or an informed individual choice?"

Re ER: "I would have to say that it is more of the former than the latter!"

Re ER: "BTW, Re: (drlobojo's)"You will follow along with the prescribed Christian way of the community and not show any deviation from that way what-so-ever." Last I heard, that was calld "denying yourself." Last I heard, that *was* The Way."


And I say, beware Jonestown, beware Waco, beware Warren Jeffs, beware the crusades, beware the witch hunts, beware the pogoms, beware the purges, and test all spirits.

If you believe in the judgement day, then do you believe that you will be judged as part of a culture? community? or by yourself?

By the way, by the definition of "Heritic and Heresy", I am the one here that most qualifies and I relish the job.
 

Inasmuch as I believe I and my life will be assessed in the first place, I believe I will be assessed in the context of my culture and community, among other infuences, in light of God's grace through Christ.

It do get complicated, do it not?

Maybe some of the misunderstanding in this thread is this: Maybe you meant that the *media's portrayal* and most people's perception of of the Amish reaction to the tragedy was "too simple." It sounded like you were saying the Amish reaction, and faith, themselves were "too simple."
 

I did say, "...this current story is too simple." Story by way of the media.

ER said: "It do get complicated, do it not?"

Ditto, it is not simple.

Sabbatical: The thing I will have to take from this blog for a while.
My participation will sporodic for a bit. Knew you would miss my wit and wisdom, so thought I would give you a heads up. As the Cylons say, "See you later".
 

Oh, no! You *are* my core audience!

Sigh. ...