What happens when we claim the text and the author have a very specific cultural location that makes some of what is in the text “no longer correct?” Ouch, I know. For some of us we have been taught and trained to hear those as fighting words and to remind the offender this is the inspired word of God they are talking about.
What if each culture being written to and each author writing is at a particular stage of development or stage of cultural progress and we HAVE to take THAT into consideration as we think about the bible? That was the suggestion at the end of our last post.
This is of course one of what might be several possible solutions. I think some in more traditional church contexts as well as seminaries and more technical hermeneutics texts have tried to make it sound that because the text is inspired there is a muting of the culture boundedness of the text. If we continue to maintain that position we have learned nothing from the most glaring example where we tried using that line of defense. (a “defense” we don’t need)
Tomorrow is ship day. And most of you are eagerly waiting.
We know that the current religious church systems “works” for about 70% of the people. That is, for that number of people the current answers given to the questions asked, the level of engagement requested and the goods and services offered is satisfactory. Some people are cut out for that system. Some are content with the status quo, have no intention or even reason to rock the boat and have no idea what the big problem is for those experiencing discontent. Though a vast majority of them, by their own admission, have not one time experienced the presence of God in their personal lives or their church in the last 12 months, they remain committed. (see Barna’s Revolution for this stat and others like it)
When original goodness and blessing gets displaced by original sin you can’t help but have anything but the traditional way of spiritual formation. It has been characterized as a three phase movement…
• Purgative, –holiness, purity, cleaness
• Illuminative –enlightenment, clarity, awareness,
• Unitive Way. – oneness with each other and world, judgments drop, unity with all of creation ensues.
I am not sure what your experience has been but the more I travel and the more I work with a wide variety of churches the more convinced I am that my experience is not unique. I have been schooled in the purgative way…almost exclusively! Unfortunately here is where the necrophila and the church intersect. If it is all about death, dying and cross you never get to life, living and resurrection. Of course the traditional way only has the purgative as movement one, but why then so little discussion and formation related to the other two? [read more...]
Biophila, a great point of departure on the Monday after Easter Sunday.
On his death bed the great author and psychologist Erich Fromm asked his friend Robert Fox, Bob why is it that the human race prefers necrophilia to biophilia?”
(Fromm → E.O. Wilson in his book of the same title, Biophilia: The Bond with Other Species, the mid 80’s popularized this term)
A fine memoir by one of America’s foremost evolutionary biologists. E. O. Wilson defines biophilia as ‘the innate tendency [in human beings] to focus on life and lifelike process. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hopes rise on its currents.’
He broadly defined biophilia as, “The passionate love of life, aliveness, and all that is full of life”
I came across this term a few years ago for the first time and it has since informed some of my reflections on what I think Jesus is trying to bring to us. Shalom wholeness and wellness is the essence of the Gospel according to Isaiah 52. Shalom wholeness and wellness is biophilia.
Ironically our culture seems entertained by necrophilia (love of death). This not only seems true in terms of many movies, TV shows and without a doubt news coverage but also many churches. American Christianity and the places we have exported it, are often more lovers of the legal…which according to our Christian writers only brings death, instead of lovers of life.
For whatever reason, while we say Jesus is all about relationship not rules apparently what the general public hears from the church is we are all about rules not relationship. Rules and regulations as a dominant expression of religion in general and Christianity in particular is necrophilia. Relationship with Jesus that is all about bringing abundant life… or biophila.
Please click here for part 1.
Please click here for part 2
Please click here for part 3
Please click here for part 4
I think the best way for us to safeguard ourselves from the charge of this being too New Agey is to recognize that while we are called to be gods, our god-ness is always derivative and therefore diminutive. This is a critical distinction that prevents putting humanity on the same level as the Triune God but at the same time acknowledges and engages what appears to be the full intent of the biblical material. Whatever it means that we are made imago dei and have the breath of God within us, it is certainly does not mean we are in every way shape and form identical to the Triune God the Creator of the Universe. There is a distinction between Creator and the Created. There is a qualitative and unique difference between the Maker and the Made. As the Created and Made ones, whatever similarities, likenesses, and whatever imago dei fullness we have, is derived from the God who made us. As a result of being derived it means we are less than the Creator. This is the safeguard and clarification of how we can have the first person conversation while allowing the Triune God to remain God and yet at the same time we can be imago dei, little gods, as Jesus says. [read more...]
GOD IN US
In our Protestant church tradition we don’t have many categories for understanding this first person, God-within pursuit. But Scripture teaches this first person perspective. Consider these passages in light of this 1st person conversation. (Emphasis added.)
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4) [read more...]
Sunday I will speak in Cape Town to a large group that forms the core of a church plant that is a genuine attempt to think and be in different ways. The services are more facilitated conversations than preaching events, web 2.0 technology is increasingly informing the conversation creating a church 2.0 environment. I love their willing spirit and drive to be Jesus in the worlds in which they live in.
Here is the video to open the 2 week conversation I will be doing on doubt.
The Fall-Redemption story is part of the story, but it is really an abbreviated lo-cal excerpt of the fuller version. And here is the problem; to start the conversation with the Fall is to start talking about God’s Story at Genesis 3. Starting the conversation here and omitting the opening salvos of the first two chapters has locked us into having only one conversation about God: the 2nd person conversation. I would like to suggest when we start the conversation with a fall-redemption paradigm we only can talk about God in 2nd person. In other words the only way we can view God is as “Other” as “out there” as another person. While that is totally true about God our inability to see God from a couple other perspectives may be debilitating us. [read more...]
I rarely see afternoon TV, but recently hit a twenty-minute segment and wow – was it compelling. Through sobbing and tears, person after person began recounting how after watching a TV show one month earlier their lives had instantly and forever changed. “Instantly” and “forever” definitely caught my attention. They went on to talk about how they were now in charge of their lives, bringing to themselves any outcomes they chose. The teachers of the phenomenon made it clear it was all because “you create your own reality, and that as a spiritual being you bring your spirit to bear on the circumstances of life.” I paused long enough to take in the details because of the confessed monumental change it brought. This was my introduction to The Secret, the most recent craze to hit American culture and propelled to cult status by current spiritual and philanthropy diva, Oprah.
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makes some of what is in the text “no longer correct?” Ouch, I know. For some of us we have been taught and trained to hear those as fighting words and to remind the offender this is the inspired word of God they are talking about. 
