The world needs whipping boys...

A meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. We can see this at work whenever we'd log in to Facebook or Twitter and the pause for a while and watch the updates feed refresh in real-time. I've often seen this at work and to tell you honestly I am starting to question the kind of collective consciousness that flourishes in the world wide web. Christopher Lao's 'I was not informed' news clip is a case in point of how we've come to exploit recent strides in technology for making juvenile and asinine pokes at people like Lao. Don't get me wrong I myself see him as an arrogant douche, however I think what was done to him is not only harsh but destructive. This I think shows our unquenchable thirst for self-assurance that we are not as bad as this and that person. But reality check we are what we post, like and share on our social media personas. The memes that have come to popularity since the advance of the internet in the late 90s is a testament of our twisted sense of humor that comes at the expense of unwilling victim whose lives are forever scared for our sake. God help us all...

Graphic novels, The Fall and the nuisance of human existence

I often find it strange that in my case theological constructs are derived out of my exposure to what many dub as juvenile entertainment, which includes graphic novels. Perhaps there is something that I hit upon as profound in the action-packed artworks that are situated in separate panels that represent individual scenes which make up a plot. After all, human experience unfolds in story and its meaning is fashioned from places, plots, and players fused in real-time.

In like fashion Biblical narratives function as vehicles of divine revelation that helps us makes sense (or better yet find) our place and meaning in this sizeable and ever changing storyline that we call life. That perhaps explains why we often find ourselves identifying with the characters in Bible stories because in a way they lay bare a part of ourselves that we exhibit we whenever we cope with the harsh realities of life as well as when we feel like we are brought face to face to the actuality of the divine in our midst.

In this reflection for this class on Christian anthropology I would like to turn our attention on the primordial creation narrative of The Fall, looked at from the vantage point of a graphic novel: Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke, where I will attempt to find parallels between the two comic book storylines in relation to the fall of man and the predicament of human existence that follows it.

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Ave atque vale Rainbow Warrior

I remember first meeting the Rainbow Warrior during my first year working for Greenpeace six years ago. I will forever be grateful to have been given that rare chance to go on board as a volunteer blogger during its Asia Clean Energy Tour of 2005.

A wise man once said: “endings are mere beginnings that are looked at the opposite direction." Today Greenpeace stand on the crossroads in eager anticipation of its new vessel as it tearfully gives the well deserved retirement for its flagship, that has carried out daring campaigns and inspiring actions that have pave the way to making our collective aspiration of a green and peaceful future a step closer to its realization.

Bon Voyage Rainbow Warrior, thanks for the memories

Click here to share your memories of the Rainbow Warrior

MCC as a necessary intentional community

The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) has gotten a lot of flack recently from both theologically conservative wings of the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant Churches for administering same-sex mass wedding last June 25 in Baguio City.

As an Evangelical Christian, I still have a lot of questions about the theology and praxis of how Evangelical Christianity ought to conduct itself with regards to the reality of homosexuality.

Looking at Scriptures through the lens of Gadamer

Yesterday we had a very stimulating discussion about Hans-Geroge Gadamer’s work and philosophy which is mainly related to his magnum opus Truth and Method to which he tries to put forward a philosophical approach to interpreting text which involves what he calls as a ‘fusion of horizons’ where the interpreter finds the ways that the text's history articulates with their own background, which Gadamer intends to be a description of what we always do when we interpret things (even if we do not know it) to which he writes: "My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing[1]".

How this relates to sacred scriptures like the Bible, I believe Gadamer offers thoroughgoing insights that can be very important to theologians whenever they would approach scriptures.

Cool eh?

Buhawi Meneses was gracious enough to make a 3rd installment for his acoustic nights for Greenpeace. As usual DeathToPuberty is again part of the lineup of performers. Anyways I just want to post this marquee here because that's a first for DeathToPuberty. Anyways you are invited to:

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