Post Edited (jefscott) : 8/18/2007 9:37:53 AM (GMT-5)

(Butter shapens butter too, right? Minus the "r") ;)

Also thanks for the link to the irish tunes! Very cool! I've been wanting to get more into that. I used to have a few songs and lost 'em.

Too bad there's no violin smiley. I can still pretend my violin's a smaller kind of guitar. Pluck, pluck...

Post Edited (Violin for God) : 8/18/2007 1:05:02 AM (GMT-5)

Corey: "DNOTS" -- I had to google this: "Dark Night of the Soul" (Good to hear from you, BTW) Care to tell a bit more about where your path has taken you recently?

VFG: Hey! Good to hear from you! 

You mean with theology stuff or life stuff? Re: life, we're in the process of adopting, I'm still teaching German p/t until we have a lil one in the house, and Alan's still f/t, but starting in October he'll again be looking for a more permanent position (his 3-year contract w/UNLV is ending, so we really need something to come up).

Re: theology... man! It's been cool. It's a bit hard to explain, but during DNOTS I was not at all feeling God's presence, I was getting pessimistic about people in general, and just wondering about where life was going - half way feeling like I was in some emotional prison. But the thing I realized was that I was depending on feeling God in order to help me love others... but the love wasn't genuine towards all. Only people I knew and liked. Now it’s getting better (not there yet, honestly, but getting better).

At the OT/Science conference, I talked with a few people about some ideas I had about the atonement – because I didn’t know if some ideas I had were really “in left field”. In a nutshell, when I learned that my ideas were not far-fetched and that some others were not so gung-ho on the penal-substitution view (PSV), that kinda gave me more freedom to think of Christ’s death as more of a representation of a grander picture. (Before, I had a fear of being labeled “heretic Heather”)

But here’s the wierd thing about it, again in a nutshell, changing my views about the atonement changed how I viewed other people. I finally started to grasp the “Thy will be done” idea & God’s striving to redeem ALL of creation. With the PSV, I couldn’t make sense of “love” in that paradigm. Adopting a slightly adjusted view of the atonement really made me start to LOVE others differently. So in a new post down below, I’ll just post part of an e-mail I had sent to one of the participants to get her feedback (you gotta understand, here in LV it’s hard to find people to bounce ideas off of regarding the atonement, hermeneutic stuff, etc. because some “common” ideas are so entrenched) and she said my idea isn’t far-fetched at all. That was a relief to hear.

She recommended a book actually: R. Larry Shelton: Cross and Covenant: Interpreting the Atonement for 21st Century Mission. I wish I was a fast reader. Nothing like reading 4 books at the same time and getting none of them finished.

So that’s it in a nutshell. A lot of good stuff.

Hey D, it's great to see you again! I'll tell Alan that good ole "Whassuuuuup!" :)

Note: ok, I finally finished this post! :)

Post Edited (Violin for God) : 8/19/2007 9:32:40 PM (GMT-5)

Actually.... Buffy the Vampire Slayer DID do a lot for me too. Remember the episode where Angel (Buffy's boyfriend) came back from hell? Oooooh! That hit me so hard making me really realize that I don't want anyone to go to hell. If that's even a minor version of ECT... yuck! If ECT is even a possibility, I need to step up to the plate and try to convince others to turn to God and follow Christ. So it helped in kicking my butt in learning to love people.

But Buffy is also great in the category of timeless quotables... like Borat!

We really enjoyed seeing you there too. Quite a lot of fun! (to quote Borat): We have a sexy time!

I'll pass on the hugs and kisses to Alan.

Ohhhhhhhhhh Aaaaaaaalan! Where aaaaaare youuuuuu?