Otter's Rock

Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime reading comments to cereta's post On rape and men (Oh yes, I'm going there)</user>.  In one comment thread, there was some talk about how men react when women start telling stories about assault and things that have been done to them, and how men sometimes don't like to listen and try to derail the conversation because it makes them feel uncomfortable, to which the response is "well, if you hear stories of assault and don't feel uncomfortable, there's something wrong with you."  Because being comfortable is a problem when it blinds you to the realities of those less privileged than you.

And today I am writing my sermon tomorrow, and find myself remembering a quote from Thomas Cahill: "The purpose of the Gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
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If you are a science fiction fan of any religion who gets annoyed at the dismissive way a lot of science fiction often treats religion, this fic is for you. It is Christian, but focuses mainly on the Doctor's reaction to events, not on events themselves, so it should be enjoyable for everyone.

Title: Correlation and Causality
Characters: One, Three, Susan.
Spoilers: inspired by a throw-away line in Planet of the Dead, but no spoilers for the episode.
Rating: U, gen.
Words: 740.
Summary: Ten seems quite confident that he knows what happened that first Easter. But it wouldn't be the first time the Doctor's exaggerated how close he was to historical events, or that he's leaped to conclusions...
Vaguely inspired by Spike's comment in Buffy about how more people remember being at the Crucifixion than can possibly have been there.
Warnings: Um, results from slight irritation with RTD's attempts to do theology? I nearly called it "Happy Easter, emo Time Lord", but decided not to.

For those of you non-seminarians out there, "systematic theology" is where you take one central theme/belief/focus and turn it into a logically consistent overarching "system" of theology, where everything works and fits together. (Yeah. It works a lot better in the classroom than it does in real life, which doesn't normally fit into coherent and consistent systems, but it's still a good exercise because it forces you to clarify and examine your ideas about God, about humankind, about creation, etc.) To give you an example, one of the books we're reading for the class is called "The Apostles' Creed" by Pahnenburg, and it's a whole book exploring the meaning of the Apostles' Creed and what it means to us today in light of modern questions, all laid out logically and in order (he spends 15 pages on the first two words, "I believe," and goes on from there).

But the class isn't just about reading other peoples' theologies, it's about helping us develop our own system. So we're supposed to take apart the Nicene Creed and write three one-page papers of how we interpret it, one for each article (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Obviously, one could write much more than a single page, but that would take too long to go over in class and the idea is to get us thinking, not to get us the answers, so one page it is. For those of you curious about my beliefs: here we go.

( The Nicene Creed )

( Here's my interpretation of the first article. )