{"id":878,"date":"2013-04-18T20:41:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T20:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/in-the-beginning-the-word-was-god\/"},"modified":"2013-04-18T20:41:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T20:41:00","slug":"in-the-beginning-the-word-was-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/in-the-beginning-the-word-was-god\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIn the beginning\u2026the Word was God\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Murray Jardine, in his book\u00a0<em>The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity Can Save Modernity from Itself (The Christian Practice of Everyday Life),\u00a0<\/em>argues that the values found within Christianity have not kept up with modern technological advances thereby creating a moral crisis within society.\u00a0 This moral crisis includes consumerism, marital dissolutions, and a variety of other societal ills.\u00a0 However, as Christianity is arguable the source of modern science and technology, a deeper understanding of these may be found in within Christianity.\u00a0 The Protestant ethic has spurred Christians to create more and more \u201cstuff\u201d while at the same time emphasizing the ethic of moderation.\u00a0 Marriages have followed a market philosophy in the way we pick, choose, discard, repeat.\u00a0 One solution Jardine envisions as a solution to these problems is that of creating new spaces where face-to-face interaction occurs, more leisure time happens and a return to the ethic of unconditional love and compassion occurs.\u00a0 In his discussion of the face-to-face interaction he explains, \u201cwe live in a culture that is extremely visually oriented and relatively closed to the sound-dimension of human experience. Thus it is essential, if we are to develop a moral sense that can enable us to deal with technology, that we recapture a much richer sense of what we are doing when we speak and listen to other human beings. This in turn implies that we must rebuild local communities characterized by face-to-face contact\u2014that is, where speaking becomes a more central part of daily life \u2026\u201d (25)<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, I would like to discuss his concept of speaking. We know that words are powerful and can be the catalyst for things beautiful and frightening.\u00a0 Biblical scriptures mention the power in speech.\u00a0 Proverbs 18:21 says, \u201cDeath and life\u00a0are\u00a0in the power of the tongue\u2026\u201d\u00a0 And John 1:1 states, \u201cIn the beginning \u2026 the Word was God.\u201d This scripture continues to explain that the word became flesh.\u00a0 Although many would agree that this scripture is speaking of Jesus, it is interesting to think about why the word \u201cWord\u201d is used in this scripture. The Greek translation for \u201cword\u201d in this scripture is \u201clogos\u201d meaning &#8211;\u00a0 a word, speech, divine utterance, analogy. How do our own words become god and then manifest in our life, impacting ourselves as well as others?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I would like to take Jardine\u2019s thoughts on the importance of face-to face interactions to a level beyond solely communicating through speech.\u00a0 In my own research I explore created spaces using music instead of words in order to transcend boundaries of language.\u00a0 Specifically, I am interested in how these spaces work towards interfaith peacebuilding.\u00a0 When we describe our words as \u201cGod\u2019s words\u201d and those words create contradictory statements, it is sometimes hard to move forward in relationship.\u00a0 However, music is a universal language.\u00a0 Even the tones \u2013 minors and majors \u2013 can create similar emotions in people from different cultures.\u00a0 Within the music, a spiritual space wherein what has been described as \u201ca dialogue of souls\u201d begins.\u00a0 Somehow the deeper ethics of unconditional love and compassion seem to dissolve the differences in doctrines; and in this space, if only for a song, community thrives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Murray Jardine, in his book\u00a0The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity Can Save Modernity from Itself (The Christian Practice of Everyday Life),\u00a0argues that the values found within Christianity have not kept up with modern technological advances thereby creating a moral crisis within society.\u00a0 This moral crisis includes consumerism, marital dissolutions, and a variety [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[342,2,333,6,319,334],"class_list":["post-878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-communication","tag-dminlgp","tag-interfaith","tag-jardine","tag-music","tag-peacebuilding","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}