Hello World!

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”

~ James 4:13-15

To be a brilliant vapor is to live life with an awareness of its brevity, and a determination not to waste that time simply existing (defined as allowing yourself to be simply acted upon by the forces that push us around in life). It is to choose instead to actively live out this brief encounter with time, utilizing as much choice as has been given us to fill it with what is meaningful, instead of just what happens to be there.

To live life with the reality of our vapor-ness is an exercise in priorities; ours are simple. To truly live is to pursue truth, beauty, and goodness. We recognize these supreme virtues to be bound up in the person of YHWH, the Creator. Obviously, then, to pursue them is to pursue Him, to pursue Him is to pursue them. This belief contains a few consequences and assumptions:

1. Truth, beauty, and goodness exist in objective, knowable forms. These three qualities are exemplified in the person of Jesus Christ and in His kingdom (the kingdom of the heavens).

2. Truth will never contradict itself. Revealed truth (the Bible, in all its inerrant glory), and discovered truth (in science and all other explorations of what there is to know in the world) will never really disagree.

3. Our search for the beautiful must be informed by the character of God, not just what is pleasant for our senses.

4. The goodness of something is dependent on God's definition of what is good; something that He calls evil cannot be called good, and vice versa.

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list, but it should give you an idea of where we're coming from. Here is a short list of other potentially important background facts:

1. We believe in the Bible as the revealed word of God.
2. Our theology is informed by the Anabaptist tradition, specifically our upbringing and continued membership in the Mennonite church. However, other theological traditions have impacted our thinking to varying degrees and we recognize their value.
3. Our higher education is in (generally speaking) Biblical studies (Marina) and science (Landon).
4. We enjoy a good debate.

The purpose of this blog is to share what we find in our search. It might be a book or movie review, an essay on theology (or a research paper, if we're feeling ambitious), a commentary or question on recent events, a commentary or question on scripture, or whatever else our minds come up with. On any of these, we desire your interaction; questions, comments, and critiques are all welcome (just keep it civil). Marina is the voice of the blog, but the posts will inevitably come out of our life together. In the next week or two look for some questions on current events, a book review, and maybe a scientifically oriented guest post from Landon.