RedemptioVox

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I had a guy come in looking for a book by this title the other day. I asked him if he knew what the word meant, which he did. When he gave me rough a definition I knew immediately that this is word I would use regularly.

Kludge (klooj): A system which is successful in performing a particular function or solving a particular problem while at the same time being inelegant, inefficient, clumsy or patched together. 

or

Something that works for the wrong reason.

“I’ve kludged around it for now, but I’ll fix it up properly later.”

 “I’ve kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but there’s probably a better way.”

“Some say that google is a kludge”

“Purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they’ll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs.” -Dee Hock

For those who follow me on twitter you know that I have been thinking about the above statement for days now. To be honest it is nearly all I can think about. I am mesmerized by the simplicity and elegance of this idea. The product of my fixation are the following three questions:

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Here is another word that I have come across often but have never taken the time to understand and use.

Tacit: expressed or carried on without words or speech; implied.

Thus something may be tacitly understood.

Or perhaps they have a partner whose plays a tacit role in their operations.

Better yet one may find as I do that passive aggression is in large part based on one’s ability to communicate tacitly.

I had the chance to hear the founder of charity: water at Q. His story is pretty amazing and I think this video is particularly poignant. Inserting the images of the third world into our daily life conveys something significant to me. Whether it’s water, food, medical care, shelter or safety we must continually be reminded that such issues are knit into the fabric of the existence of entire people groups around the globe.

So while we wrestle with whether or not to eat organic. Whether or not to shop at wal-mart. Whether or not to drink tap water. Whether or not to immunize our children. Remember that such considerations are pure luxury to those who are just trying to eat, be clothed, drink and survive.

“Christianity does not need a “Christian Philosophy” in the narrower sense of the word. The Christian claim that the logos who has become concrete in Jesus as the Christ is at the same time the universal logos includes the claim that whenever the logos is at work it agrees with the Christian message. No philosophy which is obedient to the universal logos can contradict the concrete logos, the Logos “who became flesh.” -Tillich

This idea has had a radical impact on my thinking. For most of my life I perceived my faith to be at war with it’s enemy, which is ‘this world.’ In this way I had subscribed to the paradigmatic dualism that dominates in modern contexts. However, when I came to the same conclusion (though much less eloquently) as Tillich I found a profound sense of clarity. 

This clarity emanates from the notion that the cosmos is sourced singularly in the logos. The greeks understood this term to express the ultimate underlying reason of things. Thus, if there is only one logos and it is the same logos that is manifest in the person of Christ then we come naturally to Tillich’s coclusion above, which is that there is no contradiction or competition between the logos of the world and the logos of Christ. They are one in the same. 

Because of this one-ness people of faith are free to embrace reality without fear of what we might find, for everything may be understood either as a product of the logos or a deviation. This should keep us from fearing science, culture, economics, poverty and oppression. Instead we can begin to understand all of these kinds of issues as platforms from which we might articulate the truth of the gospel.

Complication then enters the equation not by way of a competing logos but rather by a deviation from the singular logos which holds all things together. In this frame we then understand sin as a simple deviation on the part of creation from the originating reason which is Christ. It is a disobedience. It is a becoming that was not intended.

Is this not the very gospel itself? That in light of this deviation we are separated from the logos but Jesus himself has seen to reconciling us to god.

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Today I was reading Brian McClaren. In his book, he asks the following question, “Are markets free so that inequity can reach its apogee, providing liberty and justice for a very few?”

I wasn’t familiar with word so I looked it up. Apogee means the farthest or highest point, sort of like culmination. Anyway, that’s the word for the day. Enjoy. listen

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If you haven’t figured this out yet, this blog is essentially a collection of excerpts from media I come into contact with. Occasionally something pseudo-original gets written. This is the former.

The following is from Brian McLaren’s book Everything Must Change.

“… we have a jigsaw puzzle in a box, but someone put the wrong lid on the box. We keep trying to use the picture from the wrong lid as a guide to putting the pieces together. With the wrong picture implanted in our imaginations, some of the colors on the pieces don’t seem to belong, and some shapes don’t fit. We may assume they were included by mistake and push them to the side, or maybe let them drop off the table edge altogether. And we keep searching for other colors and shapes that we see in the picture on the lid but which for some reason aren’t included in our box of pieces. What do we do? We push more and more unfitting pieces aside. We take out some scissors and colored markers and “adjust” some of the pieces that remain. We do our best to conform the pieces in the box to the picture on the lid. We do the best we can.

Some people become so disillusioned and frustrated that they throw out the whole thing - pieces, box, and all. They give up puzzling altogether. Others decide that it’s the box lid rather than the pieces that determines “orthodoxy,” and they zealously defend the lid and bestow on all who dare to question it the labels “heretic” and “apostate.”

Others become uncomfortable with the realization that their loyalty is more to the picture outside the box than to the pieces inside the box. They wonder what would happen if they reversed that loyalty and refused to accept a lid that doesn’t do justice to all the pieces in the box. They refuse to cut corners or alter colors. Eventually they decide the problem isn’t with the pieces - they actually fit together: the problem is with the picture on the lid.”

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I’ve heard this word a lot over the years but took the time to look it up today since I heard it in a message from Dr. William Edgar.

Ephemeral (i-fem-er-uhl): Lasting a very short time. Transitory, momentary, brief.

Enjoy.