Not much...and a lot...going on at the same time. Two big projects at work, back to back nonetheless, got me pretty whipped over the past two weeks. The nice thing is that the hard work allowed me to get Thursday and Friday off this weekend, so, in the end, a nice four day weekend. What a great treat.

My parents are in town for the weekend as well. We have already worked on the yard, from the outside in. At the moment, my dad's working on Liam's room making it a nice shade of sky blue. Also, we're going to add some lights in the master bedroom. Whoever designed the house only put a single overhead cannister for the main source of light. One way to do it. Perhaps they were of the philosophy that lamps are a good thing.

Looks like it'll be a productive weekend.

On the thinking side of things, I have a few little things that have popped into my head. After reading Barbie's article on the Faith Realm it came clear that the distinction between faith and belief makes sense only if you look at it in the light of action. Believing, from what I noticed today, should be drawn from our lives. Our beliefs are truly manifest in how we live our lives. If we don't do what we say we believe, we don't really believe it. Otherwise, beliefs are really nothing more than ideas we like to talk about. For me, the clarification that belief, with an emphasis on action, is novel. Before it was an abstract truth from which we associate action. Yet, to truly and rightly judge one's beliefs, one can only study actions...not vice versa.

I guess one of the dangers here would be to suggest a moral judgement system based on the belief grounded solely in action. Reason being that this eliminates the possibility of growth. This assumes that a snapshot of action or behaviour would intimate future actions for the basis for gauging beliefs, but I'm simply trying to indicate, without getting too far off base, that the future is still the realm of the unknowable--without revelation. Since this is not a Newtonian billiard ball universe, beliefs based on behavior do not include the realm of faith and the fact that we can believe things and act accordingly though the reasons for those things are not yet manifest. I guess, after thinking about it a little, you could still suggest that beliefs can be help (and actions performed on those grounds) though no cause, other than faith, supports those beliefs. The beliefs are still validated by action...it's more the causal justification, verifiable evidence, such as the things which are believed in, would be lacking.

Here is where the dynamic of prophecy and belief becomes challenging. Only the invisible poses this problem. If we belief things which we can justify with experience or proof, then we are capable of demonstrating the validity of our beliefs. Yet, God wants us to act without proof. For that, we need belief. In this vein of thought, prophecy, at least in the sense of foretold events, requires action without proof. That is the only major dynamic that creates a tension with regards to faith in action as far as I can see.

Truth and language.

I've touched on this before, but don't think I've ever clearly pointed out this note. Truth and language are so closely connected that without one, the other can't exist. In the case of truth, language is the medium through which truth can be manifest. A way to point this out is to focus on a case where there is not language. In a forest a man who has never had contact with another person knows nothing of falsehood because he has never been lied to. Trees don't lie. They do not misrepresent themselves. Animals don't lie. Nature has nothing false about it. Without ever meeting another person, falsehood could never be introduced into our mythical man's mind.

Putting this man into social life with other people, yet devoid of language, the man still has nothing to convey falsehood. Yet, with communication, with common communication, come the potential for lies. It's clear that language and truth have such a common bond that one rests on the other as a foundation. On a side note, the fact that Scripture talks about the Word as the formative basis for creation...think John 1...suggests that Jesus, i.e., the Word, the Truth, has an inherent bond much as is revealed by the mythical man example. Without Christ, without the Word, no Truth can be known.

I want to delve into the idea of language and truth after I review Kent's talks more in depth, but I've got to transcribe those and don't feel like it tonight.