have a coffee

... that I love you, Rebecca, more than anything in the world. Thank you for being my wife.

For my exploration of the functioning of the postmodern community, the internet is a natural place to look. I've begun to dive into different social networks on the internet, such as social bookmarking and tagging. Right now, I'm just beginning to try it out, but this blog post should already create some entries on del.icio.us and technorati.com

After lots of rumours, Google has finally released its new IM solution, Google Talk, at least as beta. Since GT uses the open XMPP ("Jabber") protocol, it was quite easy for me to sign on. If you're on GT, look me up under potofcoffee@gmail.org.

My friend Esa has just started a series on predestination in Paul over here. The introductory article looks interesting, but I'm a little hesitant to comment on my opinion yet, as there is promise of more to come.

So, in the postmodern world, truth is somehow defined by the community -- "local" truth, that is. This is a necessary step, because postmodern thinkers do not believe in the autonomous, thinking self anymore (does that sound like a contradiction, or what?). But then, who or what defines the community? It cannot be the sum of all its individual members, because they are undefinable, in a flux, ever-changing, nothing, really. The only thing that I can up with is that the community is somehow defined by a shared, local truth. But see, here we have a problem. The community defines the truth which defines the community. At the end, both community and truth become totally arbitrary, meaningless values. And we all succumb to the usual postmodern depression, fall into Derrida's abyss, or whatever ...

But, wait! Maybe there's hope. There's one community -- yes, you guessed right: I am talking, as usual, about the Spirit-filled community -- which is not defined by a circular (non-)definition, but rather by an external standard. The Spirit which indwelles all of the believers is the defining factor of the community and the source of its truth (which, we claim, is more than just local). So this community is different. It is unique. Maybe it is the "right" one.

Now, that sounds awfully exclusivist (and, therefore, oppressive). But, is it exclusive, when there are no other candidates to be excluded?