Saturday, December 19, 2015

My First Blog

          Have you ever told yourself that there is that thing you will never do (for whatever reason) and then you find yourself doing it? Well. . .this blog is mine. I'm not really sure why, but I have always had an aversion to blogging. Perhaps it is because I have seen so many blogs where people go on mindless rants about whatever it is in which they are displeased instead of providing thoughtful reflections that might prove useful to readers. However, with some of the recent blogs by individuals whom I highly respect, such as Michael Bird and Scott McKnight, I suppose that I have decided to create my own page where I can have my own mindless rants about whatever it is at which I am displeased, or pleased. Not that the blogs of Michael Bird and Scott McKnight are mindless rants, they are actually quite mindful reflections, but I suspect that what I intend to be my own mindful reflections on "theology and stuff" will be taken by some to be mindless rants. If there is anything that I have learned from studying the hermeneutic philosophy(ies) of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, it is that Daesin exists within her own horizon of understanding and inevitably brings this horizon with her into any event of understanding or fusion of horizons. That Daesin always brings her own horizon of understanding, which includes her pre-understandings, to that place in which understanding, i.e. a fusion of horizons, takes place has become one of the most established concepts in hermeneutic philosophy. My point in mentioning this is to emphasize that though I might intend to provide mindful reflections on "theology and stuff", it is very likely, if not inevitable, that some readers will take what I write as mindless rants, given that they will always bring with them their own horizon(s) of understanding. In all honesty, there are some posts that I might write in which readers might be well-warranted in interpreting them as mindless rants. Though I am in training to be a professional theologian I am still from Mississippi and ergo am prone to bantering about things that "get under my skin." Nonetheless, the time has come in which I have apparently changed my view of blogging and decided to create my own. I hope and pray that what I write will prove useful and thought-provoking for those who read it.
          Just in case you, the reader, are asking the question that I think you are, the answer is yes, I randomly use words in other languages, such as Daesin, without providing a definition for them. Enjoy looking these words up!