TyG - 9/26 - A Twist on Russian Roulette...

In class Tuesday night we were all told to "pick a card, any card"-- on each of these scraps of paper was the name of a postmodernist writer we have been studying. There was mostly silence after the explanation of how this process would take place; as Dr.(notorious)Rog was making his way around the classroom, it seemed there was a general feeling of dread, of prayer ("please, God don't let me get stuck with whichever author was hardest to understand"), of impending doom.

The thought that struck me (besides "please don't let me get Jameson") was that Dr.(not)Rog was (figuratively) passing around a loaded revolver, that we were all playing the old game of Russian Roulette; but this time there was a slight twist: there were five bullets loaded in the old six-shooter, and only a very slight chance of surviving the experience.

Yes, I am catastrophizing a little -- I doubt seriously that anyone's life hinges on passing the mid-term, or even the class, or even graduating college.

But since the "commentary creates the reality" in postmodernism, the bunch of us all had near-death experiences on Tuesday, and it is/will be interesting to see how much "religion" has come/will come out in blogging and class discussions in the days to come -- up until our next close-call, the mid-term exam.

I mention this near-death idea partly because of the blog entry I ALMOST posted: my four-page faith statement says, in essence, that none of this discussion on postmodernism matters at all, because I believe that God (triune, Christ-centered) is in control and loves each of us just because he (or she, or it, whatever floats your boat -- the hodge-podge English language does a miserable job with pronouns) made us, and everything, and is all-loving towards all he created.

Which brings me to the crux of my not-quite-posted rant -- (I believe) what matters is what we each believe. Every one of us has a unique world view, the lens through which we interpret all we encounter; this filter regulates ALL our responses to ALL the stimuli we experience. And we were given this Lasik surgery with no input as to what we would feel/think/believe. (I believe that, as adults, we do have the free will to adjust this world view, but hey, that may just be wishful thinking. Do we really choose what we believe, or do we follow an inevitable path? It's an old, old argument).

Nevertheless, our world view influences how we react to what we hear and read; what we believe drives all our actions.
And we ALL believe something -- God: Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, many-gods or not-god; people: essentially good or bad; life: ordered or random; sexual orientation, favorite food, color, all of it -- and the beliefs define us.

So what?

So, if you believe yourself to be helpless before the schizophrenic chaos postulated by much of postmodernistic writing, you will likely respond helplessly.
If you believe you have power to change the world, you will hopefully do so.

Essentially, the ball's in your court (if you believe what I'm saying).