The Great Controversy Story 3 (Campmeeting 2014)

Well, it's not the end of our campmeeting presentations yet, but it is the final part of my favourite discussion.  Thanks to everyone who participated.

This week, I share my understanding of the Great Controversy and what difference that makes to our understanding of God, life and the world.  My discussion begins with the question someone asked about our freedom to choose and how that relates to God's power.  For me, the center of all of this is "God with us"--where relationships matter more than power and/or "authority."  Power can never fix a broken relationship.  Thus God has to employ other methods to reconnect with humanity.

Next week we start exploring Adventist history and how the stories we tell about our past matter to our present.

Enjoy!


The Great Controversy Story 3

Foundational Stories 1 (Campmeeting 2014)

We're back!  I (David) apologize for the lack of a podcast last weekend.  I was preaching at my local church and forgot about the podcast entirely.  If you're interested, let me know and I can post a link to it.

This week begins the second session from our Story presentations at Campmeeting 2014.  We entitled it "Foundational Stories."  Underlying the small stories we tell are larger stories about what stories are and how we should relate to them.  Technically, this can be termed "foundational philosophy."  To begin the presentation, Dale and I talked about how each of us began to grapple with foundational stories through our own (academic) experiences.  This is one of my favourite presentations because we lay out many of the guiding ideas that have shaped the rest of our thought.  It's great listening to it again and being reminded of these things.

I hope you enjoy listening.


Foundational Stories 1

Living with Different Stories (Campmeeting 2014)

Great news!  Over a year later, I've finally found the recordings of our "Story" series of presentations from Campmeeting 2014.  The format is quite a bit different from our usual discussions--we had a plan for what we wanted to say, rather than simply discussing questions, and we had some good audience involvement.  Although we've covered much of the content elsewhere, these recordings are very different because we're trying to connect a lot of our ideas together into a more coherent series of presentations.  I'm working on cleaning the recordings up for posting over the coming weeks.

To begin with, I was finally able to track down the recording of our Sabbath morning presentation at The Wave from Campmeeting 2014.  We had a lot of fun with this presentation.  This episode, we talk about the difficulties we face when we start with different stories, and how that has impacted Dale and I on a personal level as we have worked and traveled together.

Thanks for joining us.  Enjoy!

Living with Different Stories

PS: If you have trouble keeping up with us on Facebook, you can subscribe for email notification of new podcasts via the box to the right of this post.

Also, if you've enjoyed our podcasts, please check out our new blog How Shall We Read?  We've decided to spend some time studying and discussing the question of Biblical hermeneutics (interpretation) while our church is doing so at a global level.  This is a question of importance for all Christians and Adventists--not just academics--so we will be reading and writing easy-to-understand (hopefully) summaries and analyses of relevant material.

The Great Controversy: Biblical Basis

Aaand we're back.  Thanks for sticking around as we're transitioning.  Dale's moved away, so we're figuring out the logistics and technical details of recording in two places at once.  In the meantime, I will be trying to write more here.  But this week, enjoy a new podcast.

After our last podcast I was talking with a friend and listener about the value of the Great Controversy as a narrative framework for understanding God, the Bible and life.  She asked about the Biblical basis for the narrative--a good question.  Admittedly, for Dale and I, this story is so much a part of our thought and life (and has been for so long) that it's difficult to try to go back to the beginning, to figure out how one might put this all together from just the Bible.  So, this isn't a comprehensive Bible study, but more a general discussion of some key points and ideas and relevant Bible passages and ideas.  We'd love to hear if you have any insights to add to the discussion.

Enjoy.

The Great Controversy: Biblical Basis

Hopefully we'll be back with another podcast next week.

The Great Controversy: The Narrative - Part 2

This week we finish telling how we understand the Great Controversy.  What has happened in the past matters, but so does the ending.  Thus we continue on, talking about the various parties involved and tracing how the story has developed since Christ.  How does a story end when the point isn't power and control?  When domination can't be the means of resolution?

This podcast is a little shorter than usual, but some of you will appreciate that.

The Great Controversy Narrative 2

The Great Controversy: The Narrative - Part 1

This week, we're continuing our series on the Great Controversy.  We figured that before we dove into the implications of this narrative way of understanding the Bible, we should outline the basics of the narrative itself.  After that, we'll see what happens.  This podcast turned out a little bit long, so it's split into two parts.  Next week will be part two.

If you've ever wondered why the Biblical stories of God are so difficult to understand, hopefully this will help.  It has helped us make sense of a great many things related to the Bible, God, life, the universe, and everything.  Actually, it ran about 42 minutes... but anywayz.  Enjoy.

The Great Controversy Narrative 1

If Nothing We Do Matters, All That Matters Is What We Do

We're back.  This should be the beginning of another run of regular weekly podcasts, just in time for school.  Of course, few of you are students anymore, but whatever.  You may notice we've updated the website.  Please bear with us as we're still working out some kinks.  For those who are interested, email subscription is now up and running.  You'll find the form in the right-hand column.  There are also a few more things we'd like to get done if we can find time.


This latest podcast is one we've been working towards for a while.  It explains one of the central ideas we often return to: "if nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do."  This statement summarizes a great many different aspects of our thinking.  I apologize in advance for the length.  We still have material left to cover, but hopefully this at least clarifies the idea.  The statement comes from an episode of "Angel" which was a spin-off of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by one of our favourite storytellers, Joss Whedon.  The story may seem a little odd to some of you, but bear with us.  The idea is profound.  Interestingly enough, Joss Whedon once referred to this particular quote to summarize his own beliefs.  (Maybe someday we'll actually get to have this conversation with him.)

Anywayz, this should hopefully be the last podcast laying out the ideas and language we regularly return to.  Next week we're hoping to begin a series exploring the ideas presented at the "A Third Way" conference we recently returned from.  Until then, enjoy.

If Nothing We Do Matters, All That Matters Is What We Do

Open Theism with Steve Mirkovich

We're finally back with a new podcast.  It was great seeing many of you at BC Campmeeting and recording a few podcasts while we were at it.  We look forward to meeting more of you at the Adventist Forum Conference coming up in September.

This week we're happy to feature a guest: Pastor Stevan Mirkovich from Vancouver.  I've known Steve since we were in junior high together.  He has wrestled long and hard with his faith and grown much in the journey--which is certainly not over.  He is recently returned from the first Open Theism conference, so we asked him to share what "open theism" means and why it is important to him.

Steve, thanks for sharing with us.  And thank you to the staff of the Lodge at Camp Hope for graciously opening a space for us to record.

Open Theism with Steve Mirkovich

We'll be back next week with another podcast.

God as Other: Why so Complicated?

Well, in Dale's absence, I've managed to find a podcast we recorded a while back but haven't released yet.  I think this is a good time for it.  Our discussion starts with a question: "If God is real, why doesn't He make himself known in a way that is obvious and unmistakable?"  This ties back into our discussion about reading the Bible as non-fiction, "Made for the Story", and my thesis.  This is a common question grounded in some assumptions about God and language and faith that don't make a lot of sense.  God wants a relationship--as such, he approaches us in ways that allow us to ignore or reject him.  He does not force himself upon us, and he speaks and appears in ways that require a response, without dictating a particular response.  That responsibility is vital to faith and life.  Ultimately, God appears as the "Great Other" who challenges our self-conceptions and doesn't always act in ways that are either comprehensible or desirable from our perspective.  But that is the great difficulty of loving another rather than yourself--different choices, different actions, different words.

Enjoy.

God as Other: Why so Complicated?

Hopefully, next week we will continue our discussion of the Bible as Nonfiction with an exploration of practices of good interpretation.

Freedom as Responsibility: David's Thesis Part 2

Well, the week has flown by.  Here's the second part of our discussion of my thesis, picking up with "the contest for meaning."  Our central question this week is how do we speak our stories and listen to others without simply looking to win?  This is a huge driving question for me.  Our discussion drifts through Idle No More, Butler and Spivak's "Who Speaks the Nation-State?", and the relationships between language, identity, culture and nationhood.  Enjoy.  And please comment!

Freedom as Responsibility Part 2

Freedom as Responsibility: David's Thesis Part 1

Release fail.  I apologize.  I've been sick and largely incapable of useful thought for the past few days, so the release is late.  Sorry.

This week is the first part of a discussion Dale and I had about my MA thesis.  If you're interested in reading it, let me know, but I will warn you that it is a dense 100 pages of critical theory.  This is the much simpler version.

In my thesis, I explored three wilderness nonfiction books: Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Peter Gzsowski's The Sacrament, and John and Jean Silverwood's Black Wave.  My question was "what is at stake in these stories that they each operate, at least partially, in an apologetic (explanatory) mode?"  My summary statement was that I was exploring "freedom as responsibility grounded in a recognition of mutual vulnerability and enacted as a contest for meaning."  The project allowed me to work through and articulate a number of ideas I've been wrestling with for the majority of my adult life, as such, it is probably my clearest articulation of the importance of story, the role it plays in our lives, and the importance and meaning of our engagement with it.  This ties back into much that we've discussed so far.

This first part ends with a question about why there must be a contest for meaning.  Part 2 answers next week.  Enjoy.

Freedom as Responsibility: David's Thesis Part 1

If anyone is interested in undertaking the reading of my most significant work thus far, it is available through the UVic Library website, here.

Part of the podcast is here.

Responding to Violence: Security, Responsibility and the Nation-State in Light of the Boston Bombings, Part 2

As promised, here is part 2 of our discussion of responding to violence in light of the Boston Bombings.  The first part didn't seem adequate and raised questions that both of us continued to think on.  We decided to address some of those questions in a second podcast.  It's not enough to say "forgive" in the face of sustained violence--we must find a way to respond that limits future violence without simply escalating force and violence.  If our only response to violence is escalating use of force and power, we do not address the problem.  However, we have to go deep to change this perspective.  Our response to violence is grounded in a number of stories about individuality, community, morality, freedom and God.  Our final question is does God merely do security theater as some contend?  This week, we try to explore some of those issues a little further.

Responding to Violence: Security, Responsibility and the Nation-State in Light of the Boston Bombings, Part 2

In the future, we are aiming for Monday releases so we have time to prep the recordings over the weekend.  Sorry about the late podcast this week, but Muskwatch is hard at work revising his thesis after a successful defense.  Next week, we'll be back with The Truth About Stories, Part II.

Responding to Violence: Security, Responsibility and the Nation-State in Light of the Boston Bombings, Part 1

Well, we had planned to release The Truth About Stories Part II this week, in which Dale explores a story about story that is particular meaningful to him.  That will be up in a few weeks.  However, it seemed more relevant to post a discussion we had about the recent Boston bombing.

First, I must express our sympathy for the people and communities impacted by this tragedy.  Life is not meant to contain such horrific pain and loss.  However, the stories we tell about loss and in response to loss are especially powerful and thus especially worthy of attention and consideration.  Too often, in our pain, we speak stories which only immortalize and extend the pain we have suffered rather than grapple with it and resolve it in any meaningful way.  As such, I must clarify that my sympathy also extends to the two young men involved, as well as their communities and to those involved in other less widely spoken stories, including the explosion in Texas and the Rehtaeh Parsons story.  We live in a broken and often brutally painful world and our response to that pain matters immensely.

This podcast focuses on the question of how we respond to vulnerability and loss, especially in terms of the stories set in motion by the nation-state and its representative authorities and authoritative speakers.  These are not easy questions and our exploration may prove unsettling to some, but I ask you to bear with us.  Given the complexity of these issues, we recorded a second podcast which, as per the poll results, we will release next week.  In the meantime, here you are:

Security, Responsibility and the Nation-State in Light of the Boston Bombings, Part 1

Or alternatively:

the same podcast on Spreaker