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Today I took a jaunt (When it's spring you can jaunt...in winter you trek, in summer you slog. In fall you can jaunt again.) downtown to drop off an exam for Systematic Theology I. I might go into all of this in great detail sometime soon...it depends on whether or not the mood hits me...but I think Christianity loses out by not explaining itself a bit more clearly. Having taken just the first step into systematic theology, I'm amazed at how well the Christian story connects and holds together. It's no wonder, really, that so many terribly bright people have believed. People like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were intellectually rigorous - a weak philosophy would not have satisfied them. There's an assumption that most people, believers and non alike, hold about Christianity...that it's a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo. We're exposed to a lot of alternative philosophies that explain themselves in rational terms and everyone just assumes (including me, till recently) that Christianity has to rely on experiential and emotional foundations. Not so. The bedrock of the faith is built on very logical thinking, the product of classical philosophy as applied by the greats like Thomas Aquinas. Anyhow, I wish that all Christians could have the chance to delve into the mind of the church as expressed over the past 2000 years. It's astounding what's been written and said. Almost equally astounding is the sheer idiocy of some modern architects. Here I refer to the kinds of people who want to be hero-geniuses, the kind of people who design buildings to look good from the air rather than the street. The kind of people who want to slap a monstrous crystal onto Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum.  I know. It looks as if an office building collapsed. It looks like a mess of twisted metal and ruined girders. It looks like a disaster. But no, that's the way they want it to look. "It's playful!" people say. Buildings do not play. Nobody wants a building to play. It's too big, it would knock things over. Buildings are supposed to sit there, holding things and people. If we're lucky they look dignified and pretty, like the old sections of the ROM. Leave playful for your puppy. Sorry. But I had to get that off my chest. |
