Sunday, January 09, 2005

I will build her a cake

Existentialism. That's what we talked about in church today. You might be asking yourself, "What in the heck does existentialism have to do with the Word of God?" Well, I'm glad you asked. I actually thought it was pretty neat. And I've been wanting lately to deepen the intellectual application of Scripture to my life.

So when the pastor started talking about existentialism, my ears perked up. You'll see that existentialism is defined as a philosophy that emphasizes a person's uniqueness, stresses freedom of choice, and assumes that people are responsible for what they make of themselves.

The example he gave was Napoleon Dynamite. You'll see that just by the look of this kid, he's definitely unique, as are some of the other key players in this film. Napoleon and Pedro are nerds, but lovable. But that doesn't really matter to them - they are true to themselves, and take responsibility for their actions. When Pedro wants to ask a girl (the prettiest and most popular girl in school), he decides to go for it and bakes her a cake.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you've got Uncle Rico. All he wants to do is just record himself living out of his van, throwing a football over and over again. He goes out to raise money to buy himself a time machine, just so that he can go back and relive his glory days.

So all that to say, we're starting to study how there were also Biblical examples of existentialism - those who did something, took responsibility, reveled in their uniqueness. People like Peter. I'm excited about this look at his life. I hope all of that made sense. More to come later, hopefully.

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