Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

Radical, Moi?

Published by

Matt Stone

2010-07-10

This morning I was labelled a radical. By a friend. Last week I was labelled an extremist. By another friend. I am taking this as a measure of theological acceptance given that, in years past, I used to be labelled a heretic with roughly the same frequency. Also because the comments were delivered in a “Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Narnia-ish kinda way. But it still surprises me because, in many ways I consider myself moderate. Neither stereotypically conservative nor stereotypically liberal.

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13 responses to “Radical, Moi?”

Cody C. Lorance

2010-07-10

That’s fun. I get some of those myself. Chin up, my brother!

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Geoff

2010-07-10

You don’t think that “Neither left nor right” isn’t radical?
🙂

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Geoff

2010-07-10

Bah – incorrect use of double negative whilst trying to be clever.

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Johno

2010-07-10

I have a theory about this. See what you think.
A human cannot judge “Radical” or “Conservative” in any objective sense. Rather we use relative measures to describe our own position.
An analogy: Humans cannot detect whether something his “hot” or “cold”. We can, however, detect that something is “Warmer than body temperature”, in which case we perceive it to be warm, or “Cooler than body temperature” in which case we perceive it to be cool. We can also say that if something is very much more warm/cool than body temperature, we perceive it to be “hot” or “cold” – but it’s still a relative measure and not an absolute measure.
For this reason you should not be surprised that I perceive you as a radical. This says nothing about you – it merely demonstrates that you are more radical than I. You naturally perceive yourself as centre ground. Similarly, I perceive myself as centre ground, though to you I would probably come across as highly conservative. You wouldn’t be an extremist as far as I’m concerned, but this is probably because you’re not so dramatically more radical than I that I would perceive you as such.
Or I could be talking utter tosh. 😀

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Ian

2010-07-10

Your moderate, radical, extreme, conservative, centrist contribution was much appreciated today 🙂

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Sallys-Journey

2010-07-10

I have been called a heretic and a conservative on the same day… I took that to mean I am probably moderate, which is where I would place myself!

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Rachel

2010-07-10

Understanding you… Have you ever done APEST? My top two are apostolic and prophetic. One of the comments under prophetic is this –
“He or she is a questioner, freely disturbing the status quo and challenging individuals and organization to move in a different direction. He or she may probe individual or group awareness to solicit further questioning, all to gain clarity. The Prophetic
leader impacts communities through integration. Prophetic leadership influences others by truth – telling, not afraid of speaking in a tension with the dominant way of thinking and practice.”
This is just SO ME. However, many people just don’t get it… You wonder at times if they are praying for you to come back to the ‘right path’ lol, when you question the way something is being done. They look confused and so worried for your soul! hehe… They really just don’t get the point that some people are here on earth to shake things up so we don’t get stuck in the same old ways of doing things.
So be encouraged Mr Extremist 😉

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Kalessin

2010-07-10

Did they imply a direction in which you were radical and extreme?

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Dan Danforth

2010-07-13

I’ve never found labels very useful. They often obfuscate.

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Matt Stone

2010-07-14

Johnno, I think you’re right. It can be very subjective at times. My affirmation of the creeds probably sounds horrible conservative to liberals, and my practice of meditation probably sounds horribly liberal to conservatives, and my advocacy of pacifism probably sounds horribly anarchic to statists of both liberal and conservative persuation.

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Matt Stone

2010-07-14

Kalessin, no, so now you mention it I’ll have to ask.

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Matt Stone

2010-07-14

Rachel, you can see my APEST scores here:
http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2007/10/apest-test.html
Apostolic first. Prophetic and Teaching equal second.

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Matt Stone

2010-07-14

Sally, LOL. How about radically-conservative? Given Jesus was executed for being so radical, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that a recovery of ancient Christo-centricity disturbs even Christians.

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