About Christov10
I’m a busy guy who’s not getting as much exercise as he needs, paddles folding kayaks for fun, and writes past his ability to clearly and consistently communicate sense. I like taking pictures of things I see while exploring local waterways, abandoned industrial structures, and commercial buildings.
I’ve lived in Germany, Spain, Turkey, Greece. I’ve lived in California, Oregon, Kentucky, and Tennessee. As a younger man, I fluently attempted to speak* French when drunk. As a child I spoke passable German. I am a native English-speaker.
I am what most pollsters would call a born-again Christian, and if it were not for my faith, I would be an anarchist or a super-villain. As a younger man, my dad said to me, only half-joking, “No, you have a light side,” as opposed to a dark side. Prior to earning a baccalaureate degree, I tested into, but did not finish a law school and a Southern Baptist seminary. I hold a degree in journalism. I am not Al Gore. I am Christov of Stepford.
*Bertrand Mafart asked me about my claim of alcoholic fluency in his mother tongue, and after reevaluating what I can remember from the time, I think it more reasonable to state that I more easily attempted to speak French, and it was a variety of American high school French sufficient to convey and apprehend meaning. To the extent that one who has consumed a liter of Vodka and innumerable bottles of cheap beer is capable of expressing and decoding sense.
Longing for Holiday said
ok Now it’s all coming back to me. I remember when I first came by your blog. Speaking of, I gotta get my blogroll back up and in action. After I finish forgiving the world…
cindy said
very interesting web-site. please don’t tell anyone (aka hubby) that i’ve visited here though, he thinks i should be working, not surfing.
cindy said
howdy!
thanks so much for posting theflatironarchive.com on your blogroll. also i told you an incorrect fact. the facebook i.d. you want for us is doodle bug. i apologize for this. theflatironcafe is what we use on myspace. i was confused (as usual). i looked for you on facebook under christov10 and christov_tenn but i didn’t find you. but, i’m not very savvy on facebook so i do well just to log in! anyway, hope all is well with you and yours!
Laurie said
Hi there,
I linked here from some comments on Steve Brown’s blog. I’ve been struggling through some of his stuff, wanting to believe it but afraid of being led astray, and more than a little overwhelmed by the intensity of some of his blog commenters. You seemed to have a reasonable head on your shoulders, so I thought I’d stop by. (I’ve already been driven from a church for being a Calivinist. Lord knows I don’t want to be antinomian, or “emergent” – but the Church is driving me nuts, and I’m tired from making resolutions like Edwards, and feeling guilty all the time, like God’s never really pleased with me.) How’s that for an introduction?
So my husband and I are HUGE Dr. Who fans. We’re actually watching the original series at the moment, because we ran out of new ones to watch. (We don’t have cable or satellite, but wait til holidays and ask for the latest sets as gifts!)
That’s all I’ve got. Hope you don’t mind if I drop by from time to time.
christov10 said
Hey Laurie,
You guys are always welcome here.
I wasn’t actually driven out of the church where my wife and I served as Sunday School teachers and I as a deacon for several years. We voluntarily left that congregation because I perceived it had become sort of a niche or boutique congregation deliberately, but not openly, catering to a particular demographic – and I didn’t see any of that as having more than vestigial relation to Christ and the Gospel. Actually, that group reckons itself very Calvinist. Unfortunately, that seems to mean they are rigidly clericalist in their ecclesiology (I may have misspelled that word). Functionally, they are in lock-step with the folks over at The Whitehorse Inn who reckon cleric-less Christianity the same as Christless Christianity.
I’m not sure where I stand on the whole emergent movement. Strikes me as just another club with somewhat different means of establishing bona fides: Little beards, square narrow glasses, doctorates, “don’t read their books, read mine,” etc. Where the folks from either side of that war are capable of honest reflection and communicating the sense arising therefrom, then I’ll listen to or read what they’ve got to say.
I guess I gradually came to a reformed understanding of scripture on the fourth or fifth reading of the New Testament, over a long period of time.
Having little respect for what passes for authority in or out of what passes for the church, I have some real antinomian tendencies, can’t justify making resolutions I know that without divine intervention on a bone-nerve-joint-synaptic level I will not keep.
To keep from being led astray, here is my completely unasked-for advice: I can only suggest reading the gospels again and again, then the rest of the New and also the Old Testaments in some kind of systematic way that makes sense to you. Ask critical question while you’re reading like, “Why was that included?” and “Who would have known and then communicated this information to the author or to someone from whom the author got the information?” then “What did it mean then (to the original readers or hearers)?” and “What does it mean now? (which is a variation on ‘why was that included?’)” Be honest with yourself and God in prayer as you read the scriptures about what you think, feel, and question about them, and trust God to provide you with some real insight through time.
One of the best things reformed theology teaches is that the only thing any of us bring to contact with the Living God is his having called us, our sin and guilt – the work of salvation is all God’s.
I’ve been trying to get through a 1964 set of Dr. Who episodes entitled The Aztecs. It’s in black and white, and the first doctor is an old man who has a granddaughter. I’m going to have to check Wikipedia to get the story on Who’s granddaughter. Some of the shows from the 70s appear to have daytime drama production values – pretty claustrophobic for this viewer. I’m hoping Netflix uploads the 2008 series so I can get back to the current set of stories and conflicts.
Laurie said
Thanks for your response. We’re on the original 1963-66 shows, with the old doctor and granddaughter. It seems the doctor gets slightly younger with each regeneration. Definite soap opera production quality but wildly entertaining, though some of the laughs were clearly not intended. (The running scenes are a riot.) We’ve recently finished watching a set of the very early Twilight Zones, and feel they may have influenced Dr. Who. One of the episodes reminded us an awful lot of the bomb shelter Twilight Zone – exploring the dark side of human nature and all that. We too can hardly wait to get the next new episodes.
I overstated my case when I said we were driven out. It felt that way, but technically it was my brother-in-law, who was an associate pastor, and several others who were heavily pressured into leaving “willingly”. So they did, hoping to avoid splitting the church. The way they were treated, compounded with the fact that you had to sign a form stating, among other things, that you were not a Calvinist in order to serve in the church, led us to feel that church was no longer the place for us.
I’m not familiar with the “clerical” business you’re speaking of. Probably because our church is independent and baptist. We’re congregational, and so small and new we barely know what we’re doing – which brings its own set of problems.
Again, thanks for your response. I’ll be back to visit.
christov10 said
I get pretty long-winded – sorry about that.
So what is the story with the doctor having a granddaughter?
Laurie said
I can more than equal your wind – no doubt about it. It’s only immense self-control (is there an emoticon for tongue-in-cheek?) that keeps my comments as brief as they are.
I haven’t come across an explanation for the grand-daughter yet. If I find one, I’ll let you know. My husband knows way more about all this than I do, but I haven’t asked him about that. He doesn’t like to give me spoilers. My goal is to eventually see them all – even the ones from the eighties (that’s where that character K-9, the robotic dog, came from, in case you didn’t know).
knowledgetoday said
I love your site. Keep it up !
Der Kapitän said
Cool, I’ll have to learn a bit about blogging from you. I can see this getting as adicting as FB.
-Andreas