Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2015
Bible readers have not always known when to read passages with an appreciation for the degree of metaphorical sophistication present in the writer of the text. To simplify and make certain an agreement between disagreeing interpreters it has often been easiest to say a "plain" reading is the preferred reading. By plain, one would mean a commonsensical reading, one of believing the eyes using a naive realism. Much later in church history after the advent of modern science the method of determining true meanings of statements consisting of true meanings only being statements which could be empirically verified has been imported into biblical interpretation by fundamentalists. And so some modern readers of the Bible have been forced to believe that biblical writers did not have the similar metaphorical finesse and lyricism that we "moderns" have. Baloney! The habits of language were present in the biblical writers who use a full range of language styles to approximate the great Mystery present in life. To treat biblical writers as those with only one trick--the crastly literal one-- in their writing skills is a great disservice to them.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2015
The ancient economic virtue of needing "cheap" labor has been revealed in uneven ways throughout the world as inhumane vice. Ancient holy books did not have the context for receiving the revelation about the full dignity of all human beings and of our animal friends. Cheap labor involved the practice of slavery, child labor and the subjugation of women and the mistreatment of animals. For those who believe in the infallibility of the details of cultural practices of those found in our holy books, it may be necessary to understand that innovations in the practice of love and justice for all people, for women, for children and animals means that God's Spirit still has continuous work to do beyond the letters of any holy book in the times when the canon of Scriptures have been closed. When we "defend" the Bible, we need to be sure we are defending a worshipful God who is always inviting us to surpass ourselves in the practice of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2015
Meanings of things get applied with pragmatic consequences. Applied meanings vary according to personalities types. Some people come to discern meanings quickly and then "pull the trigger" with an action. While others have doubts about the consequences of acting too quickly and so they spend their time collecting other meanings to inform an eventual decision and action. The two personalities can balance each other in joint ventures even as they might clash about procedural matters. Gospel personalities include the quick actors and the more contemplative patient types. In wise community process we need to have the right personal skills assigned to complete the task. The collectors of meaning need to work in advance to give the plenty of choices for the "pull the trigger" activists to bring a project to fruition.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2015
Aphorism of Day, July 27, 2015
Yes, we will use the same ol' same ol' words that we have inherited as a part of the gift of language. But language in time means that the application of words need to be done with fresh propriety bringing new arrangements of words to fit the circumstances of our lives today because if those words derive from insightful seeing, the words can actually create the world which we choose to live in today. All things were created by the Word and so we have the derivative ability to create with our words today as they are anchored in insightful discernment of our situations.
Aphorism of Day, July 26, 2015
The continuous recycling of words happens in language. Same words are used at different times but the words attain a sense of newness about them when they occur in a completely different context. Writing would seem to be a technology of freezing words by preserving their order but written texts when read become something else at each reading. The passing of time means that texts cannot have frozen meanings. Even though the Bible and liturgy may fix words to be repeated, the meanings can never be fixed in the way in which they occur to the user. We have to content with the fact that we really don't know what the words of the Bible fully meant in the time of their composition but they do become an arrangement of words onto which we project how our lives have been constituted by the words of our life. Being in the word river of life all we can say is that our words were once upstream in time.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2015
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2015
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2015
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2015
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2015
The traditional modes of interpreting the Bible are literal/historical, allegorical, moral, and anagogical or the spiritual interpretation of literal events. Christian communities have formed their identity around their preferred method of biblical interpretation. Fundamentalism gets its identity from preferring the "literal" method even though certainly when Jesus is called the gate of the sheepfold or a shepherd or light one cannot use literal interpretation. Irenaeus in the second century, perhaps set the tone for the preferring of the literal method by stating the the "plain" or literal or historical reading was first interpretation of choice. We understand now that all language is metaphorical and that the empirical or literal can actually be used as a method of denoting substantial importance. When Jesus said to eat his flesh and drink his blood, this was language related by the early church to promote the significant presence of Christ known in the Eucharistic event. Further the "apparent" precise historicity of events in the life of Jesus in the Gospel narrative all relate the spiritual practices of the early Christian communities proving a principle that "physicality" is used metaphorically as a marker of something very significant and real as spiritual ritual and practice but not actually empirically precise in the event proclaiming its origin.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2015
The ways in which words are connected with the words which relate the event of signifying thing or event are codified within various community experience. When an empty Coke bottle fell from the plane into an African village which did not know what a Coke bottle was an event occurred which had different interpretations. As much as we would want to say that it was just a Coke bottle falling to the ground, for those who did not have the same referential system it had other "true" meanings. Even though we share things within the same culture each person has an individual referential system which was formed by the context specific developmental events of an individual's life. As much as people like to be branded with community religious identity, e.g., Episcopal, "Catholic," Baptist, et. al., one still must know oneself by identifying the developmental events which have given the meaning tones to the events of one's life. One should not use "group branding" as way of avoiding to do the individual work required to "know oneself."
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2015
Modern life has forced us to be multi-processors of information. The flood of information which is available to us today is unprecedented and as gate keepers of our doors of perception we need to be selective censors. We have to choose what to let in by making choices. As gate-keeper one has to know oneself in terms of how one's personality will be affected or how one's actions will be affected by what one allows oneself to consume. We all cannot do gate-keeping in the same way and our lives of faith means that one learns to "know oneself" and to know the effects of one's intentional exposure to "world knowledge." The tolerance level for such a variety of world knowledge is quite low for some even as there is a rubbernecking fascination for information which cannot be handled. Christian eduction is based upon being able to access one's own taxonomical grids which are the filters through which one processes incoming information. Knowing oneself means that one has done careful research on the intellectual and developmental contexts of one's life which have formed the filtering paradigms for how one processes information. Without this reflection one can find that one is simply acting out and responding from a constitution over which one has not exerted significant editorial control and so one is acting and speaking as a robot of a paradigm rather than as an authorial editor who carefully sifts the hows and whys of what one thinks, believes, says and does.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2015
Modern news reporting means that we are inundated with knowledge of the conditions of people throughout the world in a continuously updating collage. We are faced with going on our picnics and vacations even with the knowledge of massive human suffering and heartache in many places. Having super knowledge only means that we are more poignantly aware of our super inability to be omnipresent rescuers. Faith has much to do with being able to tolerate our own condition of well-being even with the awareness of so many situations of world grief. Faith is not just fatal acceptance; it is the hope that each of us from our condition have insight to choose to alleviate the situations at hand for us and continue to pray that "team humanity" will learn how to match human need and human response to need.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2015
Wisdom involves using probability thinking and planning. But probability wisdom does not mean that the probable can get attached to predictable possible events as yet actual which means wise probability thinking includes an openness to the improbable such as the unplanned and unexpected awesome events, or the accidental events of threat or loss. The awesome events and the events of loss have varying degrees of "power" to alter the function of our probable lives and so our strategies of faith need to integrate the common probable with the less common improbable and strategies of faith include an honesty about getting the kind of community of support to adjust to or "celebrate" the improbable.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2016
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2015
The word traces of the past are the palette of colors available to use today to make the collage of one's life today. Words live again in new ways and they in turn become the traces in how they will be used for future word products. This is how words change subtly over the years as they become something different in different historical contexts. Words lose their functional contexts and become revered pieces in a museum without any pragmatic street use. This is why active and collaborative interpretation of the Bible is so important. Some interpreters seem to pretend they are rebuilding the details of the ancient cultures where the words derived while others are looking to find correspondences of the universal principles behind the practices. Some people see the church as a compartmental museum for the Bible where one enters for an hour plus on Sunday and pretend that hour is divorced from the life of modern science which actually dominates how they live the rest of their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2015
St. Paul promoted Christ as the one who broke down the hostility between the Jews and Gentiles. The early churches after the Pauline writings were to publish words of Jesus commanding the "love of one's enemies." Where the Jews and Gentiles were able to respect the differences of their past identities and stay in community together, the practice of the love of one's enemy became a reality. The dispensing of crucial ritual practices of Judaism by Gentile Christians was too much compromise for those who had a different vision of the mission of Judaism. Separate missions in separate communities have resulted for Christianity and Judaism even as there has always been a Unity regarding the One God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Christianity has retained the One God even while being Trinitarian with finessed intellectual smoke and mirrors.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2015
Jesus looked on the crowd and observed they were like sheep without a shepherd. And isn't that the great problem of our world. In the freedom active in our world there is the freedom for needs and the fulfillment of those needs to go unmatched. One could imagine that if every person in the world could be matched at all times with the friend appropriate to one's situation then the world would be at peace and well. We are overwhelmed in our world by the presence of people who need parenting care and there does not seem to be enough care to go around. And people who need care are often in such a state of defiant ignorance that they do not even know how to receive the type of care which would add every day stability to their lives. In the face of defiant ignorance of people which includes the reproductive ignorance to procreate without the knowledge or ability to provide adequately for the little ones brought into this world, we cannot give up hope. We must be active with faith and creativity to persuade and educate as many as we can to a degree of self-reliant care even while we have to realistically accept that many will always be in the state of exigent palliative handout care.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2015
Why does it take so long to see and discover things which subsequently seem so obvious? Particularly when what we discover pertains to justice and compassion. Why did it take so long for humanity to discover the cruelty of slavery and the subjugation of women and the freedom for gay people to be who they are? The tacit and unnoticed practice of injustice have occurred in the long ages when we sometimes presumed that the values of "old time religion" prevailed. If the good Book said that God created and called creation good, how is it that so many people in various social contexts have come to be treated badly and done so for religious reasons and reasons support by Holy Books? Can we not admit that sin has involved humanity being blinded often en masse to injustice, and even using religion to call such blindness, sight and health? We don't often hear many people speak about evolution meaning spiritual and moral evolution in our recovery from our corporate blindness to the practice of injustice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2015
The prophet Amos had a vision about a plumb line. A plumb line is used to give a true vertical reference line. It occurs when the weight on a vertical string is at its lowest point of the pendulum swing. As a spiritual metaphor it would mean that one's highest or transcendent values create a vertical reference for moral and spiritual living and so in living one tries to keep one's life in line with that vertical reference. Living in alignment with one's highest values is perhaps the chief goal of spiritual and moral life. The task remains to define what the higher values of love and justice are within the details of one's life. History shows us that the details of values can change as higher values get re-valued by the practice of human empathy. Slavery and subjugation of women were once accepted values of many societies whereas from the actual conditions of enlightened consensus of empathy, those once higher values had to be re-valued and shown to be as not being worthy of a worshipful God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2015
Religious movements form their identity by being the "last and final word" on God's revelation and so when another movement comes along and claims to be another "last word" those who held the previous "last words" take some offense. So competing religions all claim to have "last" words and final revelation even as it is obvious we are still in time which does not permit "last words" only latest words. Modern scientific method is based upon always having only tentative last words, words which endure until a better meaning of data arises through new findings. Religions could learn something from the tentativeness of modern science about having final last words or final meanings. If people of faith would embrace the revelatory nature of universal patterns of human behavior found in their Holy Books, they would let the details from cultures and contexts of the past be tentative and then look for relevant applications and correspondences of the universal patterns in the present or latest word activity of our lives. We could then live honest to God and honest to science as a method of application in our use of latest words.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2015
An irony of the baptism of John of the Baptist is that baptism in Judaism was for proselytes. That John the Baptist was requiring it of his fellow Jews seems to indicate that he was requiring them to convert to a condition of heart that was supposed to be theirs already in their practice of Judaism. John the Baptist founded a reforming community whose identity was expressed in the rite of baptism as a sort of "re-entry" into the Promised Land through the River Jordan. That John the Baptist figures prominently within the Gospels is probably an indication that his movement was a reforming movement and transitional movement built upon the expectation of imminent end of the world. Christianity became the movement which had to deal with the reality that the world did not end and so it became an integrating fellowship life style for Jews, and mainly Gentiles who were mediating their social/personal orientation within the cities of the Roman Empire.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2015
What is it that allowed Paul and Peter to lift crucial ritual customs of Judaism so easily? It probably had to do with the success of the message of Christ in forming fellowship groups among the Gentiles. So it had to be a revelation that God was launching a different mission than had been the mission of Judaism. The inaccessibility of ritual customs of Judaism to Gentiles coupled with the evidence of the charismatic change of Gentile moral and spiritual behaviors meant that a new Movement had been born. Peter and Paul were like the Jewish theological intelligentsia of this new movement who altered the interpretation of things Judaica through the inventions of new teleological reuse of symbols, some of which stretched metaphorical signification to interesting limits, e.g., the church becoming the "New Israel."
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2015
While many claim equal inspiration for all words of the Bible, no one practices equal emphasis for the telling relevance of all words of the Bible. The frequency of reading selections from Bible create hierarchies of favorite verses and portions and from these favorites have derived doctrinal schools with different emphases. How we read Scripture and what we read most often sometimes forms the ethos of one's life and patterns of inconsistent fundamentalisms can be formed. For example, a literal doctrine of Eucharistic presence can be derived from the words of Jesus, "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood." And someone can quote from the Second letter to Timothy about "all Scripture being inspired by God" and assume that the letter writer was writing about his own writing being "inspired" Scripture while he was writing. The Anglican habit of including "Reason" as a vital source of inspiration means that we use words of reason to mediate Scripture and Tradition in making applications of correspondence in our fluid situations of life. Even people who use illogical words of reason about the Bible are still favoring their kind of reasoning over their "assumed" notion of the direct authority of Scripture or Tradition. Scripture and Tradition are unavoidably mediated through the words of Reason.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2015
Did you ever consider how one's ethos could be formed by the emphasis one gives to reading certain portions of the Bible. People who are fixated on using the Bible as their literary Nostradamus spend most of their Bible reading time trying to figure out the end of the world and they lose their stewardship empathy for creation because in apocalyptic fatalism they cry out for the end convincing themselves that they will ride divine chariots to the sky in their Rapture. One can only pray for those who want the world to end so soon and so badly for most of its inhabitants and demure by saying, "The Bible made me believe it."
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2015
More than any known person within the Christian tradition, St. Paul's faith identity was formed by living on the border between Judaism and Christianity. But for St. Paul, the border area between Judaism and the Gentiles became the new country of Christianity. That border area was receptive of a larger fellowship of people. And St. Paul was also involved in many border disputes because of this attempt to blend Jews and Gentiles within this new community of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2015
In a world where people of faith are often persecuted if they are in a minority community and history records people of faith hurting each other because of "doctrinal" disagreements and when people use their faith beliefs to justify their harming of their "enemies" we should pause and give thanks for the disestablishment of state religion which is perhaps America's greatest gift to the world. Forcing religion on people is contrary to the Gospel of freedom and people who are secure in their faith believe in the winsomeness of their practice of the love of Christ and God's eternal patience in granting the freedom of differences among people who can live as citizens with mutual respect. Rather than touting ourselves as a "Christian country" as though it was like winning a sporting contest, let us tout ourselves as a country with lots of Christians who respect the freedom of others to choose because we respect our own freedom to follow the teachings of Jesus.
Aphorism of the day, July 3, 2015
A favorite example of a longest English word has often been the word, antidisestablishmentarianism. It designated a group of people who supported the continuation of a State "established" church. Church and state issues are prominent in the formation of the American identity and has often been used in the catch phrase "separation of church and state," a phrase used first in a letter of Thomas Jefferson. This phrase has been "deconstructed" many, many times because of the oft changing paradigms of social constitution and inventions in manifold human endeavors and especially the promise of the scientific method to be able to establish "value" neutral methods of discourse. Value neutral methods of discourse are impossible when it comes to public discourse since one cannot completely compartmentalize one's faith values from being expressed in any public forum. Values have also evolved in how they have been understood and articulated in the practical expression of justice in both church and society, e.g. slavery, subjugation of women, et al. When there is a coincidence between public and "secular" values and "faith" values a religionist might simply baptize a secular values as being anonymously "Christian" whereas a secularist might say that enlightened human consensus can arrive at surpassing values without reference to religious faith. The Independence which we celebrate on July 4th is very much related to our grand experiment in respecting each other ever problematized by the fact that minority voices in our country continue to arise to ask us to be our best Inclusive Self as an American Self and add another chair and place setting at the American Table of Honor. We are at our best when we can welcome others with full dignity to our Grand Table. This Table of valuing of differences, the "pluribus in our unum" is good Eucharistic theology for our church as well.
Aphorism of the day, July 2, 2015
One of the Gospel evangelistic strategies could be stated as "go where one is wanted and received." The reception of the Gospel occurs when there are receptive conditions. In the baptismal practice of infants and children one assumes that the community of faith will constitute an environment of God's love, forgiveness and call to one's life ministry such that when the infant becomes older, he or she will confirm the irresistability and winsomeness of God's love and grace.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2015
Family members can disagree vehemently with each other while they defend one another from the criticisms of outsiders. The most severe critics of the Jews were the prophets recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. The New Testament writings are evidence of a transition of the Jesus Movement leaving the synagogue communities and in the decades after the destruction of the Temple becoming communities of separate worship. Moving from a position of being a reforming movement within Judaism to becoming a separate religious movement made Christians and Jews outsiders to each other. Once a Christo-centric Judaism became predominately a faith program adopted by mainly Gentile members and outside of "mainstream" Judaism, the posture of mutual respect of faith communities should have become the practice. In practice, it has become that where Christian majorities have prevailed, there has often been an irrational anger toward the Jews for not "converting." Christians have often used the intense prophetic language of "reforming prophets of Judaism" against the Jews even after the communities have long separated from each other. One of the tropes which Christian communities have used is to project an eschatological/future conversion of the Jews. This may be consistent with each faith community expressing a universal openness to receive all people but it should not be used as a polemic against each other as we respect each other in diverse communities of faith.
Bible readers have not always known when to read passages with an appreciation for the degree of metaphorical sophistication present in the writer of the text. To simplify and make certain an agreement between disagreeing interpreters it has often been easiest to say a "plain" reading is the preferred reading. By plain, one would mean a commonsensical reading, one of believing the eyes using a naive realism. Much later in church history after the advent of modern science the method of determining true meanings of statements consisting of true meanings only being statements which could be empirically verified has been imported into biblical interpretation by fundamentalists. And so some modern readers of the Bible have been forced to believe that biblical writers did not have the similar metaphorical finesse and lyricism that we "moderns" have. Baloney! The habits of language were present in the biblical writers who use a full range of language styles to approximate the great Mystery present in life. To treat biblical writers as those with only one trick--the crastly literal one-- in their writing skills is a great disservice to them.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2015
The ancient economic virtue of needing "cheap" labor has been revealed in uneven ways throughout the world as inhumane vice. Ancient holy books did not have the context for receiving the revelation about the full dignity of all human beings and of our animal friends. Cheap labor involved the practice of slavery, child labor and the subjugation of women and the mistreatment of animals. For those who believe in the infallibility of the details of cultural practices of those found in our holy books, it may be necessary to understand that innovations in the practice of love and justice for all people, for women, for children and animals means that God's Spirit still has continuous work to do beyond the letters of any holy book in the times when the canon of Scriptures have been closed. When we "defend" the Bible, we need to be sure we are defending a worshipful God who is always inviting us to surpass ourselves in the practice of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2015
Meanings of things get applied with pragmatic consequences. Applied meanings vary according to personalities types. Some people come to discern meanings quickly and then "pull the trigger" with an action. While others have doubts about the consequences of acting too quickly and so they spend their time collecting other meanings to inform an eventual decision and action. The two personalities can balance each other in joint ventures even as they might clash about procedural matters. Gospel personalities include the quick actors and the more contemplative patient types. In wise community process we need to have the right personal skills assigned to complete the task. The collectors of meaning need to work in advance to give the plenty of choices for the "pull the trigger" activists to bring a project to fruition.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2015
The bread of heaven discourse traces a drift from how eating
became slowly divorced from the hunger need.
How is it that the Eucharist has become such stylized elements of food
and drink expressing that people don’t live by word alone but by the word of
God but still occurs in a world when people still do not have enough to
eat? The Passover meal was an actual
meal; the Israelites actually ate manna in the wilderness to avoid starvation;
the multitude fed by Jesus actually ate loaves and fish. What is the value of ritual eating if it
co-exists with so much starvation in the world?
Could it be that the origins of Eucharist are rooted in publicly eating
together because eating in public together was a very obvious way to verify that
everyone in the community was getting enough to eat? It could be that the success of Christianity
meant that frequent large gatherings of public eating were not logistically
possible so the ritualization of the shared presence of Christ was
celebrated. Even so, such a shared
presence in very stylized and ritualized elements should not be divorced from
the actual hunger and thirst needs of people in our world.
Aphorism of Day, July 27, 2015
Yes, we will use the same ol' same ol' words that we have inherited as a part of the gift of language. But language in time means that the application of words need to be done with fresh propriety bringing new arrangements of words to fit the circumstances of our lives today because if those words derive from insightful seeing, the words can actually create the world which we choose to live in today. All things were created by the Word and so we have the derivative ability to create with our words today as they are anchored in insightful discernment of our situations.
Aphorism of Day, July 26, 2015
The continuous recycling of words happens in language. Same words are used at different times but the words attain a sense of newness about them when they occur in a completely different context. Writing would seem to be a technology of freezing words by preserving their order but written texts when read become something else at each reading. The passing of time means that texts cannot have frozen meanings. Even though the Bible and liturgy may fix words to be repeated, the meanings can never be fixed in the way in which they occur to the user. We have to content with the fact that we really don't know what the words of the Bible fully meant in the time of their composition but they do become an arrangement of words onto which we project how our lives have been constituted by the words of our life. Being in the word river of life all we can say is that our words were once upstream in time.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2015
Why would anyone want to assume that the meaning of anything or
anyone or any book is fixed or final? Why
would we want to assume fixed meanings for the Bible in the process of its
composition, editing, re-editing and its canonical history of the politics of
human community resulting in eventually
selecting the readings to be included in the official “Bible(s)?” The Bible in its composition includes many
layers of meanings due to the reuse of traditions inherited within the
community and something which meant one thing in a context five years ago may
have completely different application and interpretation when it is quoted or
used in a subsequent situation. Only controlling
tyrants of meaning want to fix meanings and generally they do so for
controlling the community identity because plurality of meanings may seem to be
divisive and a threat to the community leadership. If a person continues to have insights in
continuing to read the Bible over time does one’s subsequent insights make
invalid all of the meanings one had in past when one was less wise, less
experienced or less mature? The meanings
of the Bible are still open if one believes they still have power to inspire in
new contexts.
Modern scholars who study the Bible events as modern historians
begin by assuming the consistency of natural laws of science which are observed
today are the same ones which would have been in operation for the
peoples of the Bible. The events which
do not comport with accepted and tested modes of causality are regarded then to
be literature written not for scientific accuracy as we understand it but
written to demarcate a sense of wonder and awe as descriptive of an event which
significantly altered the lives of the person who experienced such an event. We modern folk as well, engage in a hyperbole consistent with the
magnitude of the life changing events.
Hyperbolic expressions occur all of the time. Bible writers were often trying to write many
different stylistic variations and genres of the word, “Wow!”
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2015
All language itself functions like adjectives and adverbs
modifying previous words about things and actions and events. Each language use is a reuse of language
about previous language use so language use is like rearranging the furniture
of comportment within existence.
Sometimes apparent new language has to evolve from new arrangements of
words to account for outstanding events.
Jesus was one such unique outstanding event for whom the language
furniture has been rearranged for all who have come to live in his house.
Bumper sticker on the aphorist’s car: “I brake for insights!”'
The traditional modes of interpreting the Bible are literal/historical, allegorical, moral, and anagogical or the spiritual interpretation of literal events. Christian communities have formed their identity around their preferred method of biblical interpretation. Fundamentalism gets its identity from preferring the "literal" method even though certainly when Jesus is called the gate of the sheepfold or a shepherd or light one cannot use literal interpretation. Irenaeus in the second century, perhaps set the tone for the preferring of the literal method by stating the the "plain" or literal or historical reading was first interpretation of choice. We understand now that all language is metaphorical and that the empirical or literal can actually be used as a method of denoting substantial importance. When Jesus said to eat his flesh and drink his blood, this was language related by the early church to promote the significant presence of Christ known in the Eucharistic event. Further the "apparent" precise historicity of events in the life of Jesus in the Gospel narrative all relate the spiritual practices of the early Christian communities proving a principle that "physicality" is used metaphorically as a marker of something very significant and real as spiritual ritual and practice but not actually empirically precise in the event proclaiming its origin.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2015
The ways in which words are connected with the words which relate the event of signifying thing or event are codified within various community experience. When an empty Coke bottle fell from the plane into an African village which did not know what a Coke bottle was an event occurred which had different interpretations. As much as we would want to say that it was just a Coke bottle falling to the ground, for those who did not have the same referential system it had other "true" meanings. Even though we share things within the same culture each person has an individual referential system which was formed by the context specific developmental events of an individual's life. As much as people like to be branded with community religious identity, e.g., Episcopal, "Catholic," Baptist, et. al., one still must know oneself by identifying the developmental events which have given the meaning tones to the events of one's life. One should not use "group branding" as way of avoiding to do the individual work required to "know oneself."
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2015
Modern life has forced us to be multi-processors of information. The flood of information which is available to us today is unprecedented and as gate keepers of our doors of perception we need to be selective censors. We have to choose what to let in by making choices. As gate-keeper one has to know oneself in terms of how one's personality will be affected or how one's actions will be affected by what one allows oneself to consume. We all cannot do gate-keeping in the same way and our lives of faith means that one learns to "know oneself" and to know the effects of one's intentional exposure to "world knowledge." The tolerance level for such a variety of world knowledge is quite low for some even as there is a rubbernecking fascination for information which cannot be handled. Christian eduction is based upon being able to access one's own taxonomical grids which are the filters through which one processes incoming information. Knowing oneself means that one has done careful research on the intellectual and developmental contexts of one's life which have formed the filtering paradigms for how one processes information. Without this reflection one can find that one is simply acting out and responding from a constitution over which one has not exerted significant editorial control and so one is acting and speaking as a robot of a paradigm rather than as an authorial editor who carefully sifts the hows and whys of what one thinks, believes, says and does.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2015
Modern news reporting means that we are inundated with knowledge of the conditions of people throughout the world in a continuously updating collage. We are faced with going on our picnics and vacations even with the knowledge of massive human suffering and heartache in many places. Having super knowledge only means that we are more poignantly aware of our super inability to be omnipresent rescuers. Faith has much to do with being able to tolerate our own condition of well-being even with the awareness of so many situations of world grief. Faith is not just fatal acceptance; it is the hope that each of us from our condition have insight to choose to alleviate the situations at hand for us and continue to pray that "team humanity" will learn how to match human need and human response to need.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2015
Wisdom involves using probability thinking and planning. But probability wisdom does not mean that the probable can get attached to predictable possible events as yet actual which means wise probability thinking includes an openness to the improbable such as the unplanned and unexpected awesome events, or the accidental events of threat or loss. The awesome events and the events of loss have varying degrees of "power" to alter the function of our probable lives and so our strategies of faith need to integrate the common probable with the less common improbable and strategies of faith include an honesty about getting the kind of community of support to adjust to or "celebrate" the improbable.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2016
In the play of freedom in this world one can still devise
strategies attune to probabilities. In
the play of freedom with strategies of probabilities the improbable still
occurs, the uncanny, the eerie, the wonderful, the macabre and the
fascinating. Sometimes religious faith
is based too much upon a falsely presumed frequency of the improbable and “religiously”
crazed people ignore the fact that the events of the improbable do not negate
the preponderance of the quotidian probable.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2015
The word traces of the past are the palette of colors available to use today to make the collage of one's life today. Words live again in new ways and they in turn become the traces in how they will be used for future word products. This is how words change subtly over the years as they become something different in different historical contexts. Words lose their functional contexts and become revered pieces in a museum without any pragmatic street use. This is why active and collaborative interpretation of the Bible is so important. Some interpreters seem to pretend they are rebuilding the details of the ancient cultures where the words derived while others are looking to find correspondences of the universal principles behind the practices. Some people see the church as a compartmental museum for the Bible where one enters for an hour plus on Sunday and pretend that hour is divorced from the life of modern science which actually dominates how they live the rest of their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2015
St. Paul promoted Christ as the one who broke down the hostility between the Jews and Gentiles. The early churches after the Pauline writings were to publish words of Jesus commanding the "love of one's enemies." Where the Jews and Gentiles were able to respect the differences of their past identities and stay in community together, the practice of the love of one's enemy became a reality. The dispensing of crucial ritual practices of Judaism by Gentile Christians was too much compromise for those who had a different vision of the mission of Judaism. Separate missions in separate communities have resulted for Christianity and Judaism even as there has always been a Unity regarding the One God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Christianity has retained the One God even while being Trinitarian with finessed intellectual smoke and mirrors.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2015
Jesus looked on the crowd and observed they were like sheep without a shepherd. And isn't that the great problem of our world. In the freedom active in our world there is the freedom for needs and the fulfillment of those needs to go unmatched. One could imagine that if every person in the world could be matched at all times with the friend appropriate to one's situation then the world would be at peace and well. We are overwhelmed in our world by the presence of people who need parenting care and there does not seem to be enough care to go around. And people who need care are often in such a state of defiant ignorance that they do not even know how to receive the type of care which would add every day stability to their lives. In the face of defiant ignorance of people which includes the reproductive ignorance to procreate without the knowledge or ability to provide adequately for the little ones brought into this world, we cannot give up hope. We must be active with faith and creativity to persuade and educate as many as we can to a degree of self-reliant care even while we have to realistically accept that many will always be in the state of exigent palliative handout care.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2015
Why does it take so long to see and discover things which subsequently seem so obvious? Particularly when what we discover pertains to justice and compassion. Why did it take so long for humanity to discover the cruelty of slavery and the subjugation of women and the freedom for gay people to be who they are? The tacit and unnoticed practice of injustice have occurred in the long ages when we sometimes presumed that the values of "old time religion" prevailed. If the good Book said that God created and called creation good, how is it that so many people in various social contexts have come to be treated badly and done so for religious reasons and reasons support by Holy Books? Can we not admit that sin has involved humanity being blinded often en masse to injustice, and even using religion to call such blindness, sight and health? We don't often hear many people speak about evolution meaning spiritual and moral evolution in our recovery from our corporate blindness to the practice of injustice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2015
The prophet Amos had a vision about a plumb line. A plumb line is used to give a true vertical reference line. It occurs when the weight on a vertical string is at its lowest point of the pendulum swing. As a spiritual metaphor it would mean that one's highest or transcendent values create a vertical reference for moral and spiritual living and so in living one tries to keep one's life in line with that vertical reference. Living in alignment with one's highest values is perhaps the chief goal of spiritual and moral life. The task remains to define what the higher values of love and justice are within the details of one's life. History shows us that the details of values can change as higher values get re-valued by the practice of human empathy. Slavery and subjugation of women were once accepted values of many societies whereas from the actual conditions of enlightened consensus of empathy, those once higher values had to be re-valued and shown to be as not being worthy of a worshipful God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2015
Religious movements form their identity by being the "last and final word" on God's revelation and so when another movement comes along and claims to be another "last word" those who held the previous "last words" take some offense. So competing religions all claim to have "last" words and final revelation even as it is obvious we are still in time which does not permit "last words" only latest words. Modern scientific method is based upon always having only tentative last words, words which endure until a better meaning of data arises through new findings. Religions could learn something from the tentativeness of modern science about having final last words or final meanings. If people of faith would embrace the revelatory nature of universal patterns of human behavior found in their Holy Books, they would let the details from cultures and contexts of the past be tentative and then look for relevant applications and correspondences of the universal patterns in the present or latest word activity of our lives. We could then live honest to God and honest to science as a method of application in our use of latest words.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2015
An irony of the baptism of John of the Baptist is that baptism in Judaism was for proselytes. That John the Baptist was requiring it of his fellow Jews seems to indicate that he was requiring them to convert to a condition of heart that was supposed to be theirs already in their practice of Judaism. John the Baptist founded a reforming community whose identity was expressed in the rite of baptism as a sort of "re-entry" into the Promised Land through the River Jordan. That John the Baptist figures prominently within the Gospels is probably an indication that his movement was a reforming movement and transitional movement built upon the expectation of imminent end of the world. Christianity became the movement which had to deal with the reality that the world did not end and so it became an integrating fellowship life style for Jews, and mainly Gentiles who were mediating their social/personal orientation within the cities of the Roman Empire.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2015
What is it that allowed Paul and Peter to lift crucial ritual customs of Judaism so easily? It probably had to do with the success of the message of Christ in forming fellowship groups among the Gentiles. So it had to be a revelation that God was launching a different mission than had been the mission of Judaism. The inaccessibility of ritual customs of Judaism to Gentiles coupled with the evidence of the charismatic change of Gentile moral and spiritual behaviors meant that a new Movement had been born. Peter and Paul were like the Jewish theological intelligentsia of this new movement who altered the interpretation of things Judaica through the inventions of new teleological reuse of symbols, some of which stretched metaphorical signification to interesting limits, e.g., the church becoming the "New Israel."
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2015
While many claim equal inspiration for all words of the Bible, no one practices equal emphasis for the telling relevance of all words of the Bible. The frequency of reading selections from Bible create hierarchies of favorite verses and portions and from these favorites have derived doctrinal schools with different emphases. How we read Scripture and what we read most often sometimes forms the ethos of one's life and patterns of inconsistent fundamentalisms can be formed. For example, a literal doctrine of Eucharistic presence can be derived from the words of Jesus, "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood." And someone can quote from the Second letter to Timothy about "all Scripture being inspired by God" and assume that the letter writer was writing about his own writing being "inspired" Scripture while he was writing. The Anglican habit of including "Reason" as a vital source of inspiration means that we use words of reason to mediate Scripture and Tradition in making applications of correspondence in our fluid situations of life. Even people who use illogical words of reason about the Bible are still favoring their kind of reasoning over their "assumed" notion of the direct authority of Scripture or Tradition. Scripture and Tradition are unavoidably mediated through the words of Reason.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2015
Did you ever consider how one's ethos could be formed by the emphasis one gives to reading certain portions of the Bible. People who are fixated on using the Bible as their literary Nostradamus spend most of their Bible reading time trying to figure out the end of the world and they lose their stewardship empathy for creation because in apocalyptic fatalism they cry out for the end convincing themselves that they will ride divine chariots to the sky in their Rapture. One can only pray for those who want the world to end so soon and so badly for most of its inhabitants and demure by saying, "The Bible made me believe it."
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2015
More than any known person within the Christian tradition, St. Paul's faith identity was formed by living on the border between Judaism and Christianity. But for St. Paul, the border area between Judaism and the Gentiles became the new country of Christianity. That border area was receptive of a larger fellowship of people. And St. Paul was also involved in many border disputes because of this attempt to blend Jews and Gentiles within this new community of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2015
In a world where people of faith are often persecuted if they are in a minority community and history records people of faith hurting each other because of "doctrinal" disagreements and when people use their faith beliefs to justify their harming of their "enemies" we should pause and give thanks for the disestablishment of state religion which is perhaps America's greatest gift to the world. Forcing religion on people is contrary to the Gospel of freedom and people who are secure in their faith believe in the winsomeness of their practice of the love of Christ and God's eternal patience in granting the freedom of differences among people who can live as citizens with mutual respect. Rather than touting ourselves as a "Christian country" as though it was like winning a sporting contest, let us tout ourselves as a country with lots of Christians who respect the freedom of others to choose because we respect our own freedom to follow the teachings of Jesus.
Aphorism of the day, July 3, 2015
A favorite example of a longest English word has often been the word, antidisestablishmentarianism. It designated a group of people who supported the continuation of a State "established" church. Church and state issues are prominent in the formation of the American identity and has often been used in the catch phrase "separation of church and state," a phrase used first in a letter of Thomas Jefferson. This phrase has been "deconstructed" many, many times because of the oft changing paradigms of social constitution and inventions in manifold human endeavors and especially the promise of the scientific method to be able to establish "value" neutral methods of discourse. Value neutral methods of discourse are impossible when it comes to public discourse since one cannot completely compartmentalize one's faith values from being expressed in any public forum. Values have also evolved in how they have been understood and articulated in the practical expression of justice in both church and society, e.g. slavery, subjugation of women, et al. When there is a coincidence between public and "secular" values and "faith" values a religionist might simply baptize a secular values as being anonymously "Christian" whereas a secularist might say that enlightened human consensus can arrive at surpassing values without reference to religious faith. The Independence which we celebrate on July 4th is very much related to our grand experiment in respecting each other ever problematized by the fact that minority voices in our country continue to arise to ask us to be our best Inclusive Self as an American Self and add another chair and place setting at the American Table of Honor. We are at our best when we can welcome others with full dignity to our Grand Table. This Table of valuing of differences, the "pluribus in our unum" is good Eucharistic theology for our church as well.
Aphorism of the day, July 2, 2015
One of the Gospel evangelistic strategies could be stated as "go where one is wanted and received." The reception of the Gospel occurs when there are receptive conditions. In the baptismal practice of infants and children one assumes that the community of faith will constitute an environment of God's love, forgiveness and call to one's life ministry such that when the infant becomes older, he or she will confirm the irresistability and winsomeness of God's love and grace.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2015
Family members can disagree vehemently with each other while they defend one another from the criticisms of outsiders. The most severe critics of the Jews were the prophets recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. The New Testament writings are evidence of a transition of the Jesus Movement leaving the synagogue communities and in the decades after the destruction of the Temple becoming communities of separate worship. Moving from a position of being a reforming movement within Judaism to becoming a separate religious movement made Christians and Jews outsiders to each other. Once a Christo-centric Judaism became predominately a faith program adopted by mainly Gentile members and outside of "mainstream" Judaism, the posture of mutual respect of faith communities should have become the practice. In practice, it has become that where Christian majorities have prevailed, there has often been an irrational anger toward the Jews for not "converting." Christians have often used the intense prophetic language of "reforming prophets of Judaism" against the Jews even after the communities have long separated from each other. One of the tropes which Christian communities have used is to project an eschatological/future conversion of the Jews. This may be consistent with each faith community expressing a universal openness to receive all people but it should not be used as a polemic against each other as we respect each other in diverse communities of faith.
