New adventures, old ghosts

Well, things have changed.

Been wondering whether I would be able to give a new life to this blog. 

For one thing, I am now a PhD fellow. I am very excited, as I am not exactly a spring chicken no more, and this has been a dream since I finished my undergraduate degree in the nineties. (As I said, I am no spring chicken). The opportunity also conveniently put an end to a work situation which was slowly but surely wearing me down. 

It is a challenge, and I have had instances when I have been despondent, realising that I need to be more realistic in my ambitions. I also wonder if I can write something which will be truly interesting and, even better, actually useful. Otherwise, what is the point? I guess time will tell. Now that I am able to give in my overthinking intellectual self, I am also working through what kind of faith I want to have. I do want to have a faith, the alternative is too dreadful to contemplate. That feels like something I can write about. 

So, while this is in some respects the tail end of 2021 (thus proving even if you move from the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere never leaves you), it is also a time for beginnings. 

So as my sweetie turned a year yesterday (teen in the house?), here's to new adventures, and old ghosts.

If the rest of the world cannot see the difference?

Then maybe they're not the problem. 

It has worried me for a while the USian church's complicity with Donald Trump and the politics he espouses. Or perhaps one's choice of words should reveal where one's sympathies lie, and as such the idea of colonisation and appropriation as used by Critical Discourse Analysis comes to mind rather to describe the USian's relationship to Donald Trump. It is however ironic. The community of people who claim that Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as described and known through the Bible, has allowed itself to be colonised by "the world". And I do absolutely believe that. Only it is nothing new. Rather I consider this current revelation of this relationship to be nothing more than a ripping away of the veil of what has been the case for centuries. Christendom has a dialectical relationship with Western Europe and its values. And thanks to technological developments like the internet and the emergence of values such as free speech, the veneer is gone.

I grew up in apartheid South Africa. At some point I wondered why christians had done so little to fight the injustice. There was also the question of the rise of Nazism. The past three years have answered that question beyond any reasonable doubt. So to be clear, I am pretty sure it is a white, Western thing, not an USian thing.

Time for a reckoning. Time to reclaim the Jesus and God that I know from the Bible. Time to decolonise this too.

 

Article can be found here

Article can be found here

Source: I'm Not That Kind of Christian (Facebook)