The interview meme - from Purple Mirie

[fpb]

This meme says: comment if you want to be interviewed. (For obvious reasons, this post is closed to anonymous posters.)

1. What is it about history that fascinates you so?
It is very hard for me to say. I really think that my mind is just made in a particular way. I find reading texts of history, including specialist history (social history, history of science, of music, of postage stamp collecting) easier and more satisfying than any other kind of reading, not excluding my other area of skill - comic books - and great literature and poetry. That is, having the choice of reading one of the truly great novels, a comic by Alan Moore or Jack Kirby or Hayao Miyazaki, or a book of history, I would read the book of history. Why that is, I do not quite know; perhaps because it engages more that part of my mind that interprets and draws conclusions.
2. Which fictional character do you most relate to and why?
"Relate to" as opposed to "identify with". I identify with no fictional character - though as an adolescent I had a certain attraction to Hanno Buddenbrook from Thomas Mann's novel. I relate very strongly to female characters who are gentle and unaggressive but very strong and hard-working, and practically all the protagonists I create are heroines in that mold. A current favourite is Buffy.
3. Given the chance to do some time travelling, to which time and place would you go to and why?
All of them. But I would favour those on the edge of our knowledge, where discoveries can be made that extend our existing knowledge of the past - e.g. archaic Greece, dark-age Britain, etc.
4. What's the one thing (a habit, a thing, or anything at all) that annoys you the most?
I cannot single one thing out. I am quite an irritable person, I admit. I do tend to get sudden moments when I remember and cringe at some moment when I made a more than usually big fool of myself in public. So you could say that the thing that annoys me the most is when I say or do something stupid.

And because I really want to know your thoughts on this one,

5. What are your thoughts on liberation theology?
Pretty much the Church's. I think that liberation theology is built on the confusion of secular and religious categories and the abuse of emotionally loaded words, beginning with "liberation" itself. It is rhetoric, not thought - and theology should always be thought. Christianity offers liberation from sin; liberation theology seems more concerned with liberation from the landlord. It does not matter whether or not that is "real" liberation and the other just "pie in the sky when you die"; the one is a Christian concern, the other at best a political goal. You may denounce the Christian idea of the liberty of a believer as meaningless, but not make it a mere feature of "economic" liberation; to do so would be, in C.S.Lewis' expressive image, to use the Stairway to Heaven as a short-cut to the nearest grocer.

Comments

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

1. My Portuguese father's family is indeed Catholic. My Filipina's mother's family was Catholic as well, until they converted to Seventh-day Adventism. My mom was in my Lola's womb when this happened, so naturally she takes all the credit.

My father was pretty secular, despite being Catholic. Shortly after my parents were married, my mom converted my dad to SDAism and now he is one of the strongest Christians I know.

2. Yes, I was born Christian and wanted to be baptized when I was around 9. My parents thought that was too young and I wasn't baptized until I was 13 years old. I was in church school (as opposed to public school) throughout my entire life and was a pretty strong Christian up until about a year ago.

3. Because I no longer call myself Christian but still believe in God and Jesus, my faith is still ever-present. It doesn't just leave you. I still know everything, I still believe in everything. I just choose to disagree with it. My decisions and how I feel about certain issues are still impacted somewhat by my faith, even if I didn't want them to be.

4. As for how much place it has in my intellectual life, well, quite a bit, as I went to church school from Grade 1 to my sophomore year in college. As for my artistic life... well, I'm not really artistic, so not applicable?

I am probably answering this question wrong...

5. Yes and no. SDAs do not believe that hell is burning right now. Neither do they believe that the righteous go directly to heaven immediately after death. Nor purgatory, obviously. We believe that the Bible is clear that after one dies, they are dead and that they know nothing (except for... the exceptions, obviously. Enoch, Moses, Elijah, those that were resurrected at Jesus' crucifixion, etc). It is not until Jesus comes again that the righteous dead will be resurrected and taken to heaven, and the righteous living will be lifted up with them. The wicked dead will stay dead, and the wicked living will be killed by the glory of Jesus' Second Coming.

After 1000 years in heaven (the millenium), after the righteous has had time to look through The Book of Life, etc, and see that God was fair and has always been fair, despite Satan's claim to the opposite, the Holy City in heaven will come down to this earth where Satan has been bound for the millenium, with no one to spend it with save for his own thoughts. When Zion comes down, the wicked (which are all dead) will be resurrected. They will see the city and with Satan, they will think they will be able to take over it. Obviously, they are mistaken. Fire will come down from heaven and burn them dead for eternity, forever. They will destroyed completely, not burn for all eternity. (With all my new problems with God right now, I could have never even been a Christian to begin with if I had to believe that the wicked would burn for all eternity. That is not love, that is not punishment, that is sadism, in my opinion. God says that there will never be sin again, there will never be darkness, there will never be crying or sorrow - how can that be true if there are still people being punished for all eternity?)

After that, sin will never pop up again. God will then remake the earth as it was with the Holy City there.

The End.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

About "artistic life": to the best of my knowledge, you are at least musical. Music is an art. Also you write extensively. Literature, even in the form of diary-writing, is an art. That is what I meant. I also was interested in your attitude to such things as movies, novels, etc.

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

Nowadays, I am artless and cultureless. All I do is work and workout. This summer is not a time for frivolities on my part.

I wouldn't call my diary-writing art. I think that would be a little too pretentious, even for l'i'l ol' egotistical me.