Pesky Thoughts

Ever notice how certain ideas or thoughts seem to come from nowhere and then manifest themselves in completely unrelated areas of your life. For instance, over the last week I have been part of various discussions on language as pertaining to religion, both in the philosophical and practical realms. One of Ali's latest papers touched on the subject of the impossibility of using language to describe the indescribable, the divine. The idea being that once we apply a term to an aspect of God we create a symbol out of that term (i.e. omnipotent or "God is love"), something to capture a glint of God. But the term falls short of God and if we hold to closely to these terms we miss the mark and end up worshipping mere idols instead of the true God.

Then I had a conversation with an old friend who was having difficulty discussing God with his youth group. He was bemoaning the fact that it was so difficult to know where a person is in relation to God. Do they KNOW the same things about God that I do? Do they have the same understandings of the faith in the absurd? Then there's the difficulty of trying to relate your own faith and knowledge of God to others. How can we even talk to each other if we can't fully express our own understandings and we can't fully understand others' expressions?

Then I had another philosophical conversation later with a friend along the same lines. Funny how certain things just seem to stick around when you're thinking about them.