Uncategorized
“What is the Bible?” – A Rob Bell Tumblr Series – The First of My Highlights
You start with the human. You ask those questions, you enter there, you direct your energies to understanding why these people wrote these books.
Because whatever divine you find in it, you find that divine through the human, not around it.
(I should play my hand here just a bit on where I want to take you: If you let go of the divine nature of the Bible on the front end and immerse yourself in the humanity of it, you find the divine in unexpected ways, ways that can actually transform your heart. Which is the point, right?)
Second, a bit about questions.
Often, especially when people come to a particular strange or gruesome or inexplicable passage, they’ll ask
Why did God say this?
The problem with this question is that it can leave you tied up in all kinds of knots. (Really? God told them to kill all the women and children? God did? And we’re supposed to accept that, well, that’s just how God is?)
That sort of thing.
The better question is:
Why did people find it important to tell this story?Followed by
What was it that moved them to record these words?Followed by
What was happening in the world at that time?And then
What does this passage/story/poem/verse/book tell us about how people understood who they were and who God is at that time?And then
What’s the story that’s unfolding here and why did these people think it was the story worth telling?
Read the series in full at: http://robbellcom.tumblr.com/
Christianity Divided by the Cross – Marcus Borg
American Christians are deeply divided by the cross of Jesus – namely, by how they see the meanings of his death. At the risk of labels and broad generalizations, “conservative” Christians generally believe a “payment” understanding of the cross: Jesus died to pay for our sins so we can be forgiven.
Most “progressive” Christians (at least a majority) have great difficulty with the “payment” understanding. Many reject it. Some insist that rather than focusing on Jesus’s death, we should instead focus on his life and teachings. They are right about what they affirm, even as they also risk impoverishing the meaning of Jesus by de-emphasizing the cross.
It is the central Christian symbol. And ubiquitous. Perhaps even the most widely-worn piece of jewelry. Its centrality goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. In one of the earliest New Testament documents, Paul in the early 50s summarized “the gospel” he had taught to his community in Corinth as “Christ crucified” (I Cor. 1-2). In the New Testament gospels beginning with Mark around 70, the story of Jesus’s final week and its climax in crucifixion and resurrection dominates their narratives. All four devote more than a fourth of their gospels to Jesus’s final week. And all anticipate the end of Jesus’s life earlier in their narratives. It is as if they are saying: you can’t tell the story of Jesus unless you tell the story of the cross.
Full blog post by Marcus Borg…
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s47/sh/9ce9c577-e24d-4f02-b1e7-60e98f0fdc8b/e146d70b7f9cc38c82fb54c223cd1220
“Languages are culturally constructed symbol systems” – Scot McKnight
From a theological perspective…fixation with propositions can easily lead to the attempt to use the finite tool of language on an absolute Presence that transcends and embraces all finite reality. Languages are culturally constructed symbol systems that enable humans to communicate by designating one finite reality in distinction from another. The truly infinite God of Christian faith is beyond all our linguistic grasping, as all the great theologians from Irenaeus to Calvin have insisted, and so the struggle to capture God in our finite propositional structures is nothing short of linguistic idolatry.
Jesus Dojo – Place of the Way
A preview of the video we will discussing in Harvest Group time next Sunday. Part of the Animate Faith series. Our topic will be Jesus: The Revolution of Love
Chase This Light – SACRA/PROFANA & Bunnell Strings (Jimmy Eat World Cover)
I used this video as our concluding reflection in today’s Harvest Group session – as we continue our study of the Animate Faith video series.
What do you think? Does it speak to you as a search for spiritual beliefs or something else entirely? Multiple interpretations are possible – I believe. Please post your comments below.
I’m a suspect, I’m a traitor
I’m only here in body visiting
Yellow faces in the distance screams
The beauty is in what isn’t said
I’m rising to my feet
Because tonight the world turned in me
Because right now I don’t dare to breathe
Oh babe, I know it’s alive and somewhere for us to find
Tonight chase this light with me
My just so, my last call
My life is yours in your gifted hands
Confetti rainfall in the quiet street
These things I’ve found are special now
The knot is in my reach
Because tonight the world turned in me
Because right now I don’t dare to breathe
Oh babe, I know it’s alive and somewhere for us to find
Tonight chase this light with me
A movie still, photograph
Through a martyr’s eyes I can see
I’ve seen the best of love, the best of hate
The best reward is earned
And I’ve paid for every single word I ever said
Confetti rainfall in the quiet streets
The beauty is in what you make it
So get up on your feet
Because tonight the world turned in me
Because right now I don’t dare to breathe
Oh babe, I know it’s alive and somewhere for us to find
Tonight chase this light with me
Oh babe, I know it’s alive and somewhere for us to find
Tonight chase this light with me
Truth does not …
Truth does not die in the confrontation with new knowledge but it dies when we act as if truth can be captured inside the time warped and time bound concepts of any human form. The human perception of truth is never the same as truth and that perception is never static. There is no such thing as an inerrant Bible or an infallible pope! A living religion must always be interacting with unfolding truth. – John Shelby Spong
Parachurch As a New Kind of Reformation – Fr. Richard Rohr – Daily Meditations – 44 of 52
What some call “Emerging Christianity” has four common elements, in my opinion, even if they might be described in different ways:
- There is a new honest, broad, and ecumenical Jesus scholarship. We are reading what theologians of all denominations are saying. And the amazing thing is that, at this level of scholarship at least, there is a strong consensus emerging about what Jesus really taught and emphasized.
- There is a reemergence of a contemplative mind in all of the churches. It’s not content with the dualistic mind which has dominated for the last five hundred years. Contemplation receives the whole field of the moment and lets such an open lens teach us—both what we understand along with what we don’t understand. Finally there is room for mystery and the acceptance of even being wrong or just partially right.
- This consensus (both at the scholarly and experiential levels) is revealing that Jesus tended to emphasize very different things than present organized Christianity tends to emphasize. Present organized Christianity (in all denominations) tends to be preoccupied with things that Jesus never talked about ever, and sometimes even disagreed with.
- New community structures and new parallel church organizations are often emerging and flourishing to make this possible. (The CAC would be an example of such a “parachurch” group, as well as Hospice, Habitat for Humanity, various social service ministries, contemplative prayer groups, and volunteer and mission work, etc.) None of these are in competition with Sunday religion, but they give us ways to actually do what we are told to do on Sunday. The emphasis is often orthopraxy (practice) instead of just repeating the orthodox creeds every Sunday.
Wish to sign up for CAC’s email lists yourself? Subscribe to CAC email lists here.
More about Richard Rohr – https://cac.org/richard-rohr/
The Blessed Fool 