Aphorism of the Day, November 30, 2018
Why so much apocalyptic literature in the Bible? Why is futurism the staff of life? We live toward what will be, immediately, near future, middle future, distant future, and beyond life future. Apocalyptic literature is a particular discourse of the future which functions for the writers and people for whom it was intended. The biblical models of the apocalyptic are really not "meant" for us in the sense that we do not live in the communities which derived them. They are "meant" for us in that the apocalypse includes the universal habits of language wherein the perpetual return of the same occurs. How the "return of the same" occurs in the apocalyptic future differs from the biblical contexts of the apocalyptic. One can generally say that the apocalyptic has left the "religious building" and gone into the streets of secular entertainment or apocalyptic environmentalism as culture tries to imagine the various kinds of ending of human life as we now know it.
Aphorism of the Day, November 29, 2018
The Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John the Divine by title means "unveiling." However, it is hardly an unveiling in the sense of making meaningful precise knowledge of the future evident. Revelations veils more than it reveals; it unveils stark images which cloud mysterious symbolic meanings. Lots of people try to collate it with other apocalyptic imagery from other apocalyptic writings and some presume to place their interpretation of it onto human calendar dates of specific human history. The "interpreters with special access to God's Spirit" end up reveling in their own exclusive roles as interpreters. The Book of Revelations like all language products offers insights into human experience without needing to be exactly predicative of any future event.
Aphorism of the Day, November 28, 2018
Apocalyptic discourse might be frustrating for modern people because in the pre-scientific era the probability of the near and distant future could not be extrapolated in the ways that we extrapolate how we think the near and far future will be for us who have lived after the scientific era. Imagination and science can co-exist because imagination attends every discursive practice as an engine of heuristic insights. The down to earth pragmatic often begins on the fairy wings of the fantastical.
Aphorism of the Day, November 27, 2018
In the apocalyptic words of Jesus, he remarks that heaven and earth will pass away, but that his words will not. So words are signifying entities which remain even when what is signifed does not remain, that is, in a continuous static state of existence. If the words of Jesus remain it does perhaps imply a Language User or language users who would be around to know whether the words still are indicators of existence as human beings know it.
Aphorism of the Day, November 26, 2018
As Advent approaches a pouting liturgical preacher might wistfully opine, "Darn those apocalyptic lections again! Do I have to preach on this again." The Bible does seem filled with lots of apocalyptic portions about the end of life as we know it. This seeming death watch of the biblical writers may be a bit depressing or it may be because we have been used to the use of pre-scientific imaginations being used as post-scientific evidence of a real future that will be empirically verified to prove that apocalyptic hucksters were justified in fleecing their faithful by selling their exclusive secrets about the end the world preying upon the fears of the worried and the ignorant. As one pouts about the apocalyptic in the Bible one should be honest that our current modern secular apocalypticism is far more widespread than biblical apocalypticism. We have moved the apocalyptic into the imaginations of art, particularly in the visual art of cinematic presentation. Human behaviors represented in the Bible and in modern cinema prove that being human language users, it is universal to have imaginations about "in the beginning time" and "in the end time."
Aphorism of the Day, November 25, 2018
Christ the King was a spiritualization of the messianism of the first century. Why? Jesus did not look like any earthly king, including King David and certainly not like Caesar. How could such a person be regarded to be a king? In hidden stealth, the Jesus Movement was founded member by member, house church by house church and the strength of the experience of the replication of the life of the Risen Christ in so many people engendered the title of Christ, the King of Glory. Christ in you, the hope of glory. After Constantine and the Christendom of the West, the spiritual Christ the King was united with earthly kings who purported to make Christ a true earthly king, triumphant in association with earthly power. The spiritual was not lost, but it went underground since everyone in the kingdom was passively assimilated into the kingdom of Christ through baptism. Authentic conversion by the spiritual Christ was not lost but had to co-exist with the Christ of cultural identity.
Aphorism of the Day, November 24, 2018
The Risen Christ movement attached itself to an Ascended Jesus and moved interpretation into an interior heavenly realm. Jesus as a heavenly High Priest attends an altar in heaven; the church is the new Israel without actual tribes and the Jews who rejected the Jesus Movement could not accepted a "spiritualized" Messiah, a King who was not of this world and who would not send His soldiers or followers to engage in an actual physical warfare. David was an actual earthly king with a territorial realm, Jesus did not have a territory; he was a spiritualized heaven King seated on a heavenly throne at the right hand as the Crown Prince of heaven next to God the Father, the heavenly King. So what happened to an actual earthly King Jesus? He is delayed until a future return to keep the physical notion of the Messiah as relevant in the Christ communities.
Aphorism of the Day, November 23, 2018
The kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is a major theme in the words of Jesus in the Gospels. This kingdom or realm was different from the former kingdom of David or the Kingdom of the Caesars of Rome. The oracle of Christ spoken in the community which generated John's Gospel, understood Jesus to say to Pilate: "If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over ....", This invisible kingdom might be regarded to be a quixotic denial of the world in face of the kingdoms with armies and powers to truly aid or hurt people. It is the reality of the kingdom of words, because by interior constitution by the words of our lives we are ruled. Christianity is intended to be a program of Jesus who said, "my words are spirit and life." We seek to internalize the words of Jesus such that they become the telling spirit of our life because we have progressively undergone and interior word transplant to set us on the path of love of justice.
Aphorism of the Day, November 22, 2018
Thanksgiving is the central worship event of the church catholic because Eucharist means Thanksgiving.
Aphorism of the Day, November 21, 2018
Faith is the ability to assert Providence before it is actualized.
Aphorism of the Day, November 20, 2018
Providence has various nuances; negative happenings can be nullified and re-valued based upon subsequent events. The cross became a glorified event after the resurrection. Providence in a neutral sense might be simply how subsequent events result in the entire re-valuing and everything that has happened in the past. Even a terrible person in history becomes providentially re-valued as people shout, "Don't be like he was." Learning not be be bad because of the example of a bad person, is also providence at work in the continual re-evaluation of the past which happens in the future.
Aphorism of the Day, November 19, 2018
The passage of time fine tunes what is called providence. Providence is the hindsight analysis of the telling significance of previous events which were not so recognized when they were occurring. The Passion Gospel of John is a more highly evolved in providential thinking. Jesus as a king from the cross declares not, "my God why have you forsaken me," but "It is finished!" The Johannine authors were quite certain that the Jesus Movement was a wildfire that was going to spread without abatement and so they understood King Jesus on the cross to be declaring the end of a phase of his existence which was the necessary prelude to the experience of the out of the body, spiritual Risen Christ by countless number of people.
Aphorism of the Day, November 18, 2018
Bible readers are often enamored or put of by the kind of biblical writing which is called "apocalyptic," deriving from the Greek Title for the book of Revelation also called The Apocalypse, or the unveiling. It purports to be an unveiling of events at the end of the world as we know it, but the images are so cryptic and idiopathic to the person who was in an altered state, it includes codes and references that really are unknowable. Yes, some of the codes involve cross referencing with other apocalyptic literature but one really has to presumptuous to assume that one knows the definitive meaning of these hallucinogenic imagery. The presumption of those who pretend to know the meaning of the Apocalypse mean that such people discard its significance even while our modern era gorges itself upon the apocalyptic in our modern entertainment.
Aphorism of the Day, November 17, 2018
For a long time the Holy Scriptures were the singular writings that were available to people of faith; only the further educated had access to other writings. As such a formative singular book in the lives of people, it had an omni-competent role. It was entertainment, it was politics, it was humor, it was advice, it was history, it was futurism/science fiction, it was speculation, it was legal precedence and more. The proliferation of textual products and the increasing literacy of people has challenged the Bible to be able to be such an omni-competent book for people. This is recognized in the classical Anglican statement about the Scriptures: They contain all things necessary for our salvation. This implies they don't contain all things necessary for an understanding of Quantum Physics. For people who want the Bible to remain such a singular book of significance in all manner of scientific modern life, it requires a distortion of scope and purpose of the Bible.
Aphorism of the Day, November 16, 2018
Lots of biblical scholars, prominent being Albert Schweitzer, believed that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, meaning that he identified with furor in his time over the conditions of the world which were so dire for his people, that they required an cosmic intervention and ending. But other portions of the Gospels seem to imply that Jesus proposed a "realized eschatology" or a recognition that the kingdom of God was specifically advanced in the age of the Holy Spirit. How does one resolve the apocalyptic Jesus with the realized eschatology Jesus? One can note that the Jesus in the Gospel, is the oracle Risen Christ, channeled by the apostles and preachers who had "the mind of Christ," "had the Spirit," and spoke in his "Name," such that the words could authentically be called logia of Jesus. Where the early Jesus suffered horrendous persecution, the words of Jesus were visionary apocalyptic words promising end and and intervention. In the situations of the unpersecuted church enjoying evangelical success, the words of a realized eschatology were more fitting for the conditions in the community.
Aphorism of the Day, November 15, 2018
While biblical literalists try to match up the near hallucinogenic images of the Book of Revelations with actual events in our future history, the culture at large disparages such apocalypticism, even while we probably live in the most apocalyptic age of all in our entertainment. We live by cinematic images of futurism and threats to life as we know it. Our postmodern apocalypticism is unmoored from the notion of a loving God inspiring analgesic imagery for vision to survive the kinds of human crises which occur.
Aphorism of the Day, November 14, 2018
As the world moved from a geocentric view of the solar system to a heliocentric view, there occurred a reverse orientation in philosophy, from a theocentric view to an anthropocentric view, encapsulated in the Feuerbachian phrase: "All theology is anthropology," or said in another way, "no one has or can have an non-human experience of God." There is a humility in admitting that we are locked in our prison of human experience, using anthropocentric imaginations to assert empathy with non-humans like animals or God. We cannot help but project personality, somewhat like our own, upon everything. The Christian belief in the incarnation is a license to assert that the theocentric became anthropocentric in Christ, who is proclaimed to be one with "bi-lingual" status between God and humanity so that the difference of holy transcendence might be translated into human experience. This belief also affirms human experience as a valid way to know a Plenitude which is human in that we say that we experience Plenitude, but extra-human in that Plenitude is way too much to be comprehended and so we settle for the adequate human bits to elevate us to what we regard to be the supreme values of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, November 13, 2018
Many people interpret the apocalyptic portions of the Bible as predictive of the end times and people for 2000 years have tried to tie biblical imagery to the specific events of their time. Such use of the Bible give people confidence that God is in control even in the midst of the chaos of freedom which permits lots of bad things to happen and innocent suffering to be the normal fare of existence for many. Apocalyptic images are analgesic temporary remedies to people who are in pain or think that they are in pain because their life values do not seem to prevail in their society to the degree which they want. One can accept apocalyptic literature as a valid discourse of imagination with psychological function and purpose even while like the reality of the unicorn, one should not use apocalyptic as referring to future precise events that will be empirically verified. Apocalyptic literature because it partakes of Language, includes universal patterns which are meaningfully true without being the truth of empirical verification.
Aphorism of the Day, November 12, 2018
During the time of Jesus apocalyptic speculation was rife. The world by some was believed to be in terminal mode, but by whom? The Romans? Certainly not them, because they were in control. The oppressed Jews and other oppressed peoples who were trying to maintain that God still loved them even though God did not seem to be taking adequate care of them, wanted to put the whole earth on "hospice care." Apocalyptic thinkers are pity thinkers seeming to imply, "if things are going badly for us who are God's chosen, then the entire world doesn't deserve to survive." How easy it is to assume that the entire world should be in symbiotic relationship with us such that if our lives are threatened, so should the life of the whole earth. The irony is that Christianity cured the need for apocalyptic thinking by converting the Roman Empire and when Christendom rules with a sword, apocalyptic thinking is ironically converted to triumphalism, e.g., the Lord will now return just to prove that we were right. Beware of apocalyptic thinking which is hiding group narcissism coupled with megalomania. The words of Jesus warned against the people who presume to know too much about the "end," and proclaim, "I am he, (who knows the end)."
Aphorism of the Day, November 11, 2018
One might call the "plain reading" of Scripture based upon reading most of the words as those which could all be empirically verified, the "zoom in" reading of the Bible. For visual and devotional reading such a literalism, such a reading might be inspiring to those who hope for the laws of empirical happenings to be violated in the present with scientific defying occurrences. This does happen in cinematic visual presentation. For those who do a more "zoom out" reading of the Bible in the universe of total discourse, there is a discovery of the variety of language usage by humanity with discursive practices appropriate to the occasion, some requiring pragmatic brute facts for wise actuarial manipulation of one's world for things necessary for physical and social maintenance, and some requiring aesthetic appropriation for the experience of Sublime in what might be called spiritual experience or the artistic event. Too many people live in the "zoom in" mode of reading while the science of life automatically have them contained in a "zoom out" mode. Most of the conflict of our day has to do with people who live with calcified "zoomed in" interpretation of reality which is in natural conflict with the big picture of "zoom out" reality.
Aphorism of the Day, November 10, 2018
An aspect of being humans with language is that we say that we are persons, meaning that we are defined in relationship with other persons. And being prisoners of personal experience we cannot help but personalize everyone and everything which confronts us. We take "personally" everything which happens to us. We assume that there are reasons and causes behind everything even if such remain mostly mysterious since we have no access to all of the chain in the infinite regress of all that has happened. One of the names that is given for the totality and plenitude of all that is, is God, who is a person because we as persons can only know through things being personal. Another name for the totality and plenitude as it manifests its impingements upon us is Fate. So as persons we cannot avoid relationship and as persons working on relationships with everything and everyone is the human calling. How we relate is the value laden question of the quality that we bring to relationship even as we assess the quality of how impinging events personally affect us.
Aphorism of the Day, November 9, 2018
If one reads the Bible without understanding the context of writing one can be locked out of meanings that were surely known by the "original" readers. Extenuating circumstances influence the meanings that were intended, so for readers of the Gospel of Mark, it is important to know that it was written by those who were aware of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in the year 70. To be oblivious to the circumstances can certain allow reader to appropriate many other readings or what one might call misreadings, but to attempt to attain circumstantially appropriate approximate meaning requires the study of the situation which may not be found within the text. The writer of the Gospel of Mark had to present Jesus as having foreknowledge of the destruction of the Temple and the Jesus of the Gospel is a collage of oral traditions about Jesus intertwined with the oracle of the Risen Christ channeled by early church preachers such as the Marcan Gospel preacher.
Aphorism of the Day, November 8, 2018
Irony of the widow's copper coin: She gave it to the temple for its preservation even as in the Gospel of Mark, the gift was like a herald which proclaimed the end of the temple.
Aphorism of the Day, November 7, 2018
People of means who give to charity as band aids for those who are wounded by having no state in our economic system should ask the question: How much do I have left over after I have given?
Aphorism of the Day, November 6, 2018
The widow who gave her last coin to the temple treasury is often used as a reading in the fall for church "fund-raising" called stewardship. Yet the passage is cut off from the punchline of Jesus which follows, namely, a judgment upon the temple as an institution which had encouraged the poor widow to give all as her religious obligation even while it was the obligation of the temple as an institution to take care of the poor widow. To stop at this as a simple stewardship message misses the context of judgment upon the institutions which refuse to live up to justice and love.
Aphorism of the Day, November 5, 2018
The sharpest criticism of leadership is when leaders are so exploitative that they use information in a way that results in the poor and the vulnerable acting and voting against their own self interest in service to the exploiting leader.
Aphorism of the Day, November 4, 2018
Probably the most optimistic thing about the summary of the law is the belief that human being can actually love God and their neighbors. At its heart is a expression of human perfectability, i.e, we can always grow in loving behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, November 3, 2018
Jesus said to a scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Why did he say this? The scribe was on the verge of realizing that performing religious laws did not make him a part of God's kingdom, because one cannot perform to get something that one already has. We are near or far to the kingdom of God depending on whether we've accepted life itself as a gift from God that has never been taken away. Being far or near is a matter of insight about knowing we've always been in God's kingdom as a matter of grace.
Aphorism of the Day, November 2, 2018
A scribe approached Jesus and ask him if there was a hierarchy in the law: Which law is the best? Jesus replied, "Love God, love neighbor as you love yourself." The scribe agreed and Jesus believed that he was close to the kingdom of heaven. The issue might be regarding laws as a check list in time of personal fulfillment and so one may be counting one's deeds of fulfillment only to thrown off by the recognition of what one has not yet done in fulfilling the highest law. Perhaps Jesus was hinting that the great law was a process in time and since one's time is always unfinished, we are always unfinished in keeping the highest laws. Perceiving the kingdom of heaven means that God loving and continuous process of grace and forgiveness makes up for us as we exert our life energies to love God, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Aphorism of the Day, November 1, 2018
If the habit of anthropomorphism regarding God is denied in practice, then Jesus can become too holy/transcendent to be approached and the result is the rise of the cult of the saints as more approachable intercessors since they are "more like us" than Jesus was. And when St. Mary and the saints get more prayer requests than Jesus there has been a sea change. Protestantism diminished the focus upon the saints, some even to exclusion in their practice of piety, since they believe that if Jesus was God with us, then we did not need to go to and through the "saints." The lack of the All Saints tradition in many Protestant churches highlights the difference between the "our faith" of the catholic traditions and the individual "my faith" of many Protestant churches. Some try to straddle the "both/and" of "our faith" and "my faith."
Why so much apocalyptic literature in the Bible? Why is futurism the staff of life? We live toward what will be, immediately, near future, middle future, distant future, and beyond life future. Apocalyptic literature is a particular discourse of the future which functions for the writers and people for whom it was intended. The biblical models of the apocalyptic are really not "meant" for us in the sense that we do not live in the communities which derived them. They are "meant" for us in that the apocalypse includes the universal habits of language wherein the perpetual return of the same occurs. How the "return of the same" occurs in the apocalyptic future differs from the biblical contexts of the apocalyptic. One can generally say that the apocalyptic has left the "religious building" and gone into the streets of secular entertainment or apocalyptic environmentalism as culture tries to imagine the various kinds of ending of human life as we now know it.
Aphorism of the Day, November 29, 2018
The Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John the Divine by title means "unveiling." However, it is hardly an unveiling in the sense of making meaningful precise knowledge of the future evident. Revelations veils more than it reveals; it unveils stark images which cloud mysterious symbolic meanings. Lots of people try to collate it with other apocalyptic imagery from other apocalyptic writings and some presume to place their interpretation of it onto human calendar dates of specific human history. The "interpreters with special access to God's Spirit" end up reveling in their own exclusive roles as interpreters. The Book of Revelations like all language products offers insights into human experience without needing to be exactly predicative of any future event.
Aphorism of the Day, November 28, 2018
Apocalyptic discourse might be frustrating for modern people because in the pre-scientific era the probability of the near and distant future could not be extrapolated in the ways that we extrapolate how we think the near and far future will be for us who have lived after the scientific era. Imagination and science can co-exist because imagination attends every discursive practice as an engine of heuristic insights. The down to earth pragmatic often begins on the fairy wings of the fantastical.
Aphorism of the Day, November 27, 2018
In the apocalyptic words of Jesus, he remarks that heaven and earth will pass away, but that his words will not. So words are signifying entities which remain even when what is signifed does not remain, that is, in a continuous static state of existence. If the words of Jesus remain it does perhaps imply a Language User or language users who would be around to know whether the words still are indicators of existence as human beings know it.
Aphorism of the Day, November 26, 2018
As Advent approaches a pouting liturgical preacher might wistfully opine, "Darn those apocalyptic lections again! Do I have to preach on this again." The Bible does seem filled with lots of apocalyptic portions about the end of life as we know it. This seeming death watch of the biblical writers may be a bit depressing or it may be because we have been used to the use of pre-scientific imaginations being used as post-scientific evidence of a real future that will be empirically verified to prove that apocalyptic hucksters were justified in fleecing their faithful by selling their exclusive secrets about the end the world preying upon the fears of the worried and the ignorant. As one pouts about the apocalyptic in the Bible one should be honest that our current modern secular apocalypticism is far more widespread than biblical apocalypticism. We have moved the apocalyptic into the imaginations of art, particularly in the visual art of cinematic presentation. Human behaviors represented in the Bible and in modern cinema prove that being human language users, it is universal to have imaginations about "in the beginning time" and "in the end time."
Aphorism of the Day, November 25, 2018
Christ the King was a spiritualization of the messianism of the first century. Why? Jesus did not look like any earthly king, including King David and certainly not like Caesar. How could such a person be regarded to be a king? In hidden stealth, the Jesus Movement was founded member by member, house church by house church and the strength of the experience of the replication of the life of the Risen Christ in so many people engendered the title of Christ, the King of Glory. Christ in you, the hope of glory. After Constantine and the Christendom of the West, the spiritual Christ the King was united with earthly kings who purported to make Christ a true earthly king, triumphant in association with earthly power. The spiritual was not lost, but it went underground since everyone in the kingdom was passively assimilated into the kingdom of Christ through baptism. Authentic conversion by the spiritual Christ was not lost but had to co-exist with the Christ of cultural identity.
Aphorism of the Day, November 24, 2018
The Risen Christ movement attached itself to an Ascended Jesus and moved interpretation into an interior heavenly realm. Jesus as a heavenly High Priest attends an altar in heaven; the church is the new Israel without actual tribes and the Jews who rejected the Jesus Movement could not accepted a "spiritualized" Messiah, a King who was not of this world and who would not send His soldiers or followers to engage in an actual physical warfare. David was an actual earthly king with a territorial realm, Jesus did not have a territory; he was a spiritualized heaven King seated on a heavenly throne at the right hand as the Crown Prince of heaven next to God the Father, the heavenly King. So what happened to an actual earthly King Jesus? He is delayed until a future return to keep the physical notion of the Messiah as relevant in the Christ communities.
Aphorism of the Day, November 23, 2018
The kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is a major theme in the words of Jesus in the Gospels. This kingdom or realm was different from the former kingdom of David or the Kingdom of the Caesars of Rome. The oracle of Christ spoken in the community which generated John's Gospel, understood Jesus to say to Pilate: "If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over ....", This invisible kingdom might be regarded to be a quixotic denial of the world in face of the kingdoms with armies and powers to truly aid or hurt people. It is the reality of the kingdom of words, because by interior constitution by the words of our lives we are ruled. Christianity is intended to be a program of Jesus who said, "my words are spirit and life." We seek to internalize the words of Jesus such that they become the telling spirit of our life because we have progressively undergone and interior word transplant to set us on the path of love of justice.
Aphorism of the Day, November 22, 2018
Thanksgiving is the central worship event of the church catholic because Eucharist means Thanksgiving.
Aphorism of the Day, November 21, 2018
Faith is the ability to assert Providence before it is actualized.
Aphorism of the Day, November 20, 2018
Providence has various nuances; negative happenings can be nullified and re-valued based upon subsequent events. The cross became a glorified event after the resurrection. Providence in a neutral sense might be simply how subsequent events result in the entire re-valuing and everything that has happened in the past. Even a terrible person in history becomes providentially re-valued as people shout, "Don't be like he was." Learning not be be bad because of the example of a bad person, is also providence at work in the continual re-evaluation of the past which happens in the future.
Aphorism of the Day, November 19, 2018
The passage of time fine tunes what is called providence. Providence is the hindsight analysis of the telling significance of previous events which were not so recognized when they were occurring. The Passion Gospel of John is a more highly evolved in providential thinking. Jesus as a king from the cross declares not, "my God why have you forsaken me," but "It is finished!" The Johannine authors were quite certain that the Jesus Movement was a wildfire that was going to spread without abatement and so they understood King Jesus on the cross to be declaring the end of a phase of his existence which was the necessary prelude to the experience of the out of the body, spiritual Risen Christ by countless number of people.
Aphorism of the Day, November 18, 2018
Bible readers are often enamored or put of by the kind of biblical writing which is called "apocalyptic," deriving from the Greek Title for the book of Revelation also called The Apocalypse, or the unveiling. It purports to be an unveiling of events at the end of the world as we know it, but the images are so cryptic and idiopathic to the person who was in an altered state, it includes codes and references that really are unknowable. Yes, some of the codes involve cross referencing with other apocalyptic literature but one really has to presumptuous to assume that one knows the definitive meaning of these hallucinogenic imagery. The presumption of those who pretend to know the meaning of the Apocalypse mean that such people discard its significance even while our modern era gorges itself upon the apocalyptic in our modern entertainment.
Aphorism of the Day, November 17, 2018
For a long time the Holy Scriptures were the singular writings that were available to people of faith; only the further educated had access to other writings. As such a formative singular book in the lives of people, it had an omni-competent role. It was entertainment, it was politics, it was humor, it was advice, it was history, it was futurism/science fiction, it was speculation, it was legal precedence and more. The proliferation of textual products and the increasing literacy of people has challenged the Bible to be able to be such an omni-competent book for people. This is recognized in the classical Anglican statement about the Scriptures: They contain all things necessary for our salvation. This implies they don't contain all things necessary for an understanding of Quantum Physics. For people who want the Bible to remain such a singular book of significance in all manner of scientific modern life, it requires a distortion of scope and purpose of the Bible.
Aphorism of the Day, November 16, 2018
Lots of biblical scholars, prominent being Albert Schweitzer, believed that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, meaning that he identified with furor in his time over the conditions of the world which were so dire for his people, that they required an cosmic intervention and ending. But other portions of the Gospels seem to imply that Jesus proposed a "realized eschatology" or a recognition that the kingdom of God was specifically advanced in the age of the Holy Spirit. How does one resolve the apocalyptic Jesus with the realized eschatology Jesus? One can note that the Jesus in the Gospel, is the oracle Risen Christ, channeled by the apostles and preachers who had "the mind of Christ," "had the Spirit," and spoke in his "Name," such that the words could authentically be called logia of Jesus. Where the early Jesus suffered horrendous persecution, the words of Jesus were visionary apocalyptic words promising end and and intervention. In the situations of the unpersecuted church enjoying evangelical success, the words of a realized eschatology were more fitting for the conditions in the community.
Aphorism of the Day, November 15, 2018
While biblical literalists try to match up the near hallucinogenic images of the Book of Revelations with actual events in our future history, the culture at large disparages such apocalypticism, even while we probably live in the most apocalyptic age of all in our entertainment. We live by cinematic images of futurism and threats to life as we know it. Our postmodern apocalypticism is unmoored from the notion of a loving God inspiring analgesic imagery for vision to survive the kinds of human crises which occur.
Aphorism of the Day, November 14, 2018
As the world moved from a geocentric view of the solar system to a heliocentric view, there occurred a reverse orientation in philosophy, from a theocentric view to an anthropocentric view, encapsulated in the Feuerbachian phrase: "All theology is anthropology," or said in another way, "no one has or can have an non-human experience of God." There is a humility in admitting that we are locked in our prison of human experience, using anthropocentric imaginations to assert empathy with non-humans like animals or God. We cannot help but project personality, somewhat like our own, upon everything. The Christian belief in the incarnation is a license to assert that the theocentric became anthropocentric in Christ, who is proclaimed to be one with "bi-lingual" status between God and humanity so that the difference of holy transcendence might be translated into human experience. This belief also affirms human experience as a valid way to know a Plenitude which is human in that we say that we experience Plenitude, but extra-human in that Plenitude is way too much to be comprehended and so we settle for the adequate human bits to elevate us to what we regard to be the supreme values of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, November 13, 2018
Many people interpret the apocalyptic portions of the Bible as predictive of the end times and people for 2000 years have tried to tie biblical imagery to the specific events of their time. Such use of the Bible give people confidence that God is in control even in the midst of the chaos of freedom which permits lots of bad things to happen and innocent suffering to be the normal fare of existence for many. Apocalyptic images are analgesic temporary remedies to people who are in pain or think that they are in pain because their life values do not seem to prevail in their society to the degree which they want. One can accept apocalyptic literature as a valid discourse of imagination with psychological function and purpose even while like the reality of the unicorn, one should not use apocalyptic as referring to future precise events that will be empirically verified. Apocalyptic literature because it partakes of Language, includes universal patterns which are meaningfully true without being the truth of empirical verification.
Aphorism of the Day, November 12, 2018
During the time of Jesus apocalyptic speculation was rife. The world by some was believed to be in terminal mode, but by whom? The Romans? Certainly not them, because they were in control. The oppressed Jews and other oppressed peoples who were trying to maintain that God still loved them even though God did not seem to be taking adequate care of them, wanted to put the whole earth on "hospice care." Apocalyptic thinkers are pity thinkers seeming to imply, "if things are going badly for us who are God's chosen, then the entire world doesn't deserve to survive." How easy it is to assume that the entire world should be in symbiotic relationship with us such that if our lives are threatened, so should the life of the whole earth. The irony is that Christianity cured the need for apocalyptic thinking by converting the Roman Empire and when Christendom rules with a sword, apocalyptic thinking is ironically converted to triumphalism, e.g., the Lord will now return just to prove that we were right. Beware of apocalyptic thinking which is hiding group narcissism coupled with megalomania. The words of Jesus warned against the people who presume to know too much about the "end," and proclaim, "I am he, (who knows the end)."
Aphorism of the Day, November 11, 2018
One might call the "plain reading" of Scripture based upon reading most of the words as those which could all be empirically verified, the "zoom in" reading of the Bible. For visual and devotional reading such a literalism, such a reading might be inspiring to those who hope for the laws of empirical happenings to be violated in the present with scientific defying occurrences. This does happen in cinematic visual presentation. For those who do a more "zoom out" reading of the Bible in the universe of total discourse, there is a discovery of the variety of language usage by humanity with discursive practices appropriate to the occasion, some requiring pragmatic brute facts for wise actuarial manipulation of one's world for things necessary for physical and social maintenance, and some requiring aesthetic appropriation for the experience of Sublime in what might be called spiritual experience or the artistic event. Too many people live in the "zoom in" mode of reading while the science of life automatically have them contained in a "zoom out" mode. Most of the conflict of our day has to do with people who live with calcified "zoomed in" interpretation of reality which is in natural conflict with the big picture of "zoom out" reality.
Aphorism of the Day, November 10, 2018
An aspect of being humans with language is that we say that we are persons, meaning that we are defined in relationship with other persons. And being prisoners of personal experience we cannot help but personalize everyone and everything which confronts us. We take "personally" everything which happens to us. We assume that there are reasons and causes behind everything even if such remain mostly mysterious since we have no access to all of the chain in the infinite regress of all that has happened. One of the names that is given for the totality and plenitude of all that is, is God, who is a person because we as persons can only know through things being personal. Another name for the totality and plenitude as it manifests its impingements upon us is Fate. So as persons we cannot avoid relationship and as persons working on relationships with everything and everyone is the human calling. How we relate is the value laden question of the quality that we bring to relationship even as we assess the quality of how impinging events personally affect us.
Aphorism of the Day, November 9, 2018
If one reads the Bible without understanding the context of writing one can be locked out of meanings that were surely known by the "original" readers. Extenuating circumstances influence the meanings that were intended, so for readers of the Gospel of Mark, it is important to know that it was written by those who were aware of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in the year 70. To be oblivious to the circumstances can certain allow reader to appropriate many other readings or what one might call misreadings, but to attempt to attain circumstantially appropriate approximate meaning requires the study of the situation which may not be found within the text. The writer of the Gospel of Mark had to present Jesus as having foreknowledge of the destruction of the Temple and the Jesus of the Gospel is a collage of oral traditions about Jesus intertwined with the oracle of the Risen Christ channeled by early church preachers such as the Marcan Gospel preacher.
Aphorism of the Day, November 8, 2018
Irony of the widow's copper coin: She gave it to the temple for its preservation even as in the Gospel of Mark, the gift was like a herald which proclaimed the end of the temple.
Aphorism of the Day, November 7, 2018
People of means who give to charity as band aids for those who are wounded by having no state in our economic system should ask the question: How much do I have left over after I have given?
Aphorism of the Day, November 6, 2018
The widow who gave her last coin to the temple treasury is often used as a reading in the fall for church "fund-raising" called stewardship. Yet the passage is cut off from the punchline of Jesus which follows, namely, a judgment upon the temple as an institution which had encouraged the poor widow to give all as her religious obligation even while it was the obligation of the temple as an institution to take care of the poor widow. To stop at this as a simple stewardship message misses the context of judgment upon the institutions which refuse to live up to justice and love.
Aphorism of the Day, November 5, 2018
The sharpest criticism of leadership is when leaders are so exploitative that they use information in a way that results in the poor and the vulnerable acting and voting against their own self interest in service to the exploiting leader.
Aphorism of the Day, November 4, 2018
Probably the most optimistic thing about the summary of the law is the belief that human being can actually love God and their neighbors. At its heart is a expression of human perfectability, i.e, we can always grow in loving behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, November 3, 2018
Jesus said to a scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Why did he say this? The scribe was on the verge of realizing that performing religious laws did not make him a part of God's kingdom, because one cannot perform to get something that one already has. We are near or far to the kingdom of God depending on whether we've accepted life itself as a gift from God that has never been taken away. Being far or near is a matter of insight about knowing we've always been in God's kingdom as a matter of grace.
Aphorism of the Day, November 2, 2018
A scribe approached Jesus and ask him if there was a hierarchy in the law: Which law is the best? Jesus replied, "Love God, love neighbor as you love yourself." The scribe agreed and Jesus believed that he was close to the kingdom of heaven. The issue might be regarding laws as a check list in time of personal fulfillment and so one may be counting one's deeds of fulfillment only to thrown off by the recognition of what one has not yet done in fulfilling the highest law. Perhaps Jesus was hinting that the great law was a process in time and since one's time is always unfinished, we are always unfinished in keeping the highest laws. Perceiving the kingdom of heaven means that God loving and continuous process of grace and forgiveness makes up for us as we exert our life energies to love God, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Aphorism of the Day, November 1, 2018
If the habit of anthropomorphism regarding God is denied in practice, then Jesus can become too holy/transcendent to be approached and the result is the rise of the cult of the saints as more approachable intercessors since they are "more like us" than Jesus was. And when St. Mary and the saints get more prayer requests than Jesus there has been a sea change. Protestantism diminished the focus upon the saints, some even to exclusion in their practice of piety, since they believe that if Jesus was God with us, then we did not need to go to and through the "saints." The lack of the All Saints tradition in many Protestant churches highlights the difference between the "our faith" of the catholic traditions and the individual "my faith" of many Protestant churches. Some try to straddle the "both/and" of "our faith" and "my faith."
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