Aphorism of the Day, October 31, 2016
Did it ever occur to us that Christian focus upon the afterlife seems to be a contradiction of the serenity prayer? "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." The New Testament writers seem taken up with the afterlife and the impending end of the world as we know it, so how were they using courage to change the things they could change? Can anyone change one's death or one's afterlife. How does one accept death and not presume to know too much about the specifics of the afterlife state of being? The things that we can change pertain how you and I will enter the afterlife. We can change the quality of our life before we die and from that quality assume the best kind of continuity in how we get preserved in God's memory which we hope includes a reconstitution and a continuous recycling towards excellence of Personal life force.
Aphorism of the Day, October 30, 2016
The Gospel present the opponents of Jesus as one who hung out with "sinners." All Gentiles were sinners in that they were ritually impure and defiled people. Also, the Jews who were not ritually observant according to the practice of the prominent religious parties were also "sinners." The Gospels expanded the meaning of "sinner" to all people and is a positive notion because it implied that human beings were imperfect but perfectible. Imperfect people need to be on a path of repentance. Repentance is simply the progressive education program in excellence which involves tolerating oneself in the state of being imperfect because of God's perfect grace. It involves a vision of being so much better that one cannot judge others excepts as others who are trying to deal with their own path of perfectability in equal need of grace.
Aphorism of the Day, October 29, 2016
The 12 step program includes the notion of reparation as a way of rebuilding one's credibility in recovery. The conversion of Zacchaeus inspired him to pay reparations with interest all whom he had cheated. Reparation is a way to rewrite the history of the past through a post-humus generosity to the dead past of one's own unjust behaviors. Generosity of reparation can actually be a form of resurrection.
Aphorism of the Day, October 28, 2016
Zacchaeus is the Saint of Stewardship. He proved that an encounter with Jesus will change your relationship to your money.
Aphorism of the Day, October 27, 2016
UFOologist developed the classification system of "close encounters" with alien life. Bible writers encode their system of classification of close encounters with the "alien" life of God. New Testament writers encode their classification of "close encounters" with the "alien life" of the Risen Christ. Frankly, all encounters are constituted by what makes visible the invisible, name Word and language. We know all encounters in life because we first have language. Once we have language we bring all experience into existence.
Aphorism of the Day, October 26, 2016
The Zacchaeus story recounts the serendipitous events of how he went from being a Jesus watcher from afar to becoming a disciple whose life was radically changed from an intimate encounter with Jesus in his own home. The Zacchaeus story in the Gospel is an announcement to all that having one's life changed by an encounter with Jesus has happened, may happened, will happen to anyone and it will not be exactly like with Zacchaeus because the Risen Christ through the Spirit morphs into the context specifics of anyone who can confess such an encounter.
Aphorism of the Day, October 25, 2016
The Zacchaeus story in the Gospel encapsulates features of the "Gospel seduction" within the early churches. Zacchaeus, a liminal person stuck by the choices of his profession between being a Jew and working for the Romans, is curious about Jesus from afar. Zacchaeus is made to feel chosen when Jesus invites himself into Zacchaeus' life. Jesus visits the home of Zacchaeus and his entire lifestyle is converted: he pays reparations for his over-charging and becomes a generous steward.
Aphorism of the Day, October 24, 2016
The writer of Luke has a "thing" for publicans or tax-collectors. Perhaps it is because they represent the liminal nature of the early church. Tax-collectors were often non-observant Jews who in the Gospel were shown as people who wanted to have some "faith" status. The early Jesus Movement must have embraced these liminal figures on its way to becoming a mostly Gentile community.
Aphorism of the Day, October 23, 2016
Sin and being a sinner can be designated in different ways. A sinner can be a person who does not know the rules I follow and so is different from me and undesirable because my lifestyle rules are inaccessible to such a one and so he is a "sinner" or one outside of my lifestyle rules. A sinner can be one who willfully and purposely does things that violates rules of safety, health and well being of self and others. Or sinner can be a positive state into which all people are born. We are born in the human condition with future states of excellence that we are not yet attaining. Those states of excellence invite us to grow continually in their direction. The New Testament word for sin is an archery term meaning to "miss the mark," or to fall short of the target. This is the perpetual human condition since future excellence, no matter what our state of practice is now, is always a future target at which we will continually aim. As we define a current excellent target and then attain it, in attaining it, it will be further revealed that another future target exposes the inadequacy of what we have attained. This is the nature of learning. Future excellence should always keep us humble about what we have attained and certainly not qualified to judge others who are on other archery ranges in quest of their own targets at their own rates of growth in the life process of spiritual archery.
Aphorism of the Day, October 22, 2016
The New Testament redefines sinner from being but a "ritually" non-observant person to being the state of being imperfect. The positive notion of being a sinner is that the admission of sin means also that one is perfectible. The notions of grace, mercy and forgiveness is that God's perfection is shared with the sinner and so each sinner has the freedom to accept a substitutionary perfection with God, so each person can say, "I'm perfect with God." Perfection is the wholeness that one accepts by acknowledging being made complete by God's grace.
Aphorism of the Day, October 21, 2016
"God be merciful to me a sinner." Failed archers of the world unite! The New Testament world for sin is to fail as an archer to hit the target. So sin can be a positive notion, if the target one is aiming at is the continuously elusive perfection of God. Oops. I missed again but I going to keep shooting my arrows of intentional life deeds toward the excellence which God requires. One can create all sorts of arbitrary targets to shoot out and achieve, e.g., not eating anymore broccoli, and be proud of achieving such "easy" targets. One can judge others for not attaining the easy targets attained in one's own life. But in the game of Ultimate Archery, one's target is the moving target of God's perfection at which one is always aiming and always failing and yet always improving because shooting in the direction of perfection is how we get better. And always missing perfection is how we remain as those who have humble reasons for not judging others who have their own history of "archery" experience.
Aphorism of the Day, October 20, 2016
The panning of religious leaders by Jesus including a parable of comparing favorably the repentant publican with a Pharisee characterized as a "self righteous" prig is indicative of the polemic of the early church in its separation "anxiety" from the synagogue. The early Christian leaders had two shocks: Gentiles were drawn to the message of Jesus and most members of the traditional parties of Judaism were not. So Christianity dismissed the ritual purity codes of Judaism to conform to Gentile Christianity. This scenario forms the ethos of those who generated the writings of the New Testament. Today, we need not identify with the polemic which so informed the separation of synagogue and church.
Aphorism of the Day, October 19, 2016
The negative side of the "insight of sin" is to have the prideful attitude of thinking that one does not have significant sin or judging others for having obviously worse sins than one's own. The positive side of sin is to compare oneself with one future surpassable self in excellence and humbly acknowledge how much more one has to attain that one requests mercy from God and God's patience to allow one to continue to maintain in the life journey of self-surpassability in excellence. The best insight of sin is to compare oneself with oneself and hope for self-surpassability in holiness in the future.
Aphorism of the Day, October 18, 2016
"God be merciful to me a sinner." The realization of sin is a very positive realization since it means that one subscribes to the view of human perfectability, with God's mercy tolerating us and completing us when we are not yet perfect. Perfection then is not an individual quest; it is acceptance of perfection as "wholeness" because we live and move and have our being in God. And an experience within the Holy Ground of God is mercy.
Aphorism of the Day, October 17, 2016
"God be merciful to me a sinner." Knowing that one is a sinner is a positive notion in the Gospel. It means that one realizes that one has not yet attained the more perfect moral targets where one is aiming. Knowing that one is a sinner is the realization that one is "in time." Being "in time" we cannot claim some "static laurels" and judge ourselves as somehow better than others forever. Being "in time" we are invited to the humility of anticipation for future excellent performance.
Aphorism of the Day, October 16, 2016
When things happen to us we tend to take them personally. We may think that God has blessed us or that God or some other agents is punishing us. The Greek personified fate as the Moirai; those divine personal metaphors of destiny. In the Gospel parable of the nagging widow and the judge, the judge represents the personification of the negative probable outcomes which happen in a true system of freedom. All of us have to learn to live in relationship with this judge, the by product of freedom, and when the negative outcomes express deprivation of health, goodness and justice, we need to become the holy naggers who pray continuously for the normalcy of justice, goodness, health and kindness. Such nagging is the free expression of faith geared to help tilt the balance toward justice in the overall environment of real freedom and real possibilities.
Aphorism of the Day, October 15, 2016
Consider the nagging prayers of faith in the face of injustice. Conceive of Reality as a quantity of interacting and mutual occasions. Consider in a free system of interacting occasions the ability for certain qualitative occasions to reach the tipping point of majority such that the qualitative majority begins to tilt the whole in its favor. Adding up the qualitative prayers and actions of faith within the Total Milieu of all occasions means that hopeful outcomes can be effected. When the Son of Man comes will he find faith? God is luring and coaxing us to tip the majority toward just outcomes. Let us prevail in nagging prayers against injustice. Our prayerful "votes of faith" count in the eventual outcomes.
Aphorism of the Day, October 14, 2016
Why is the nagging prayer of faith important within the freedom of injustice being a persistent reality of life? If injustice is an expression of freedom, faith and prayerful faith is also a persistent freedom. It is almost like Jesus is suggesting that when a majority of occasions of faithful prayer makes injustice a minority, then injustice must respond to the events of faith overcoming it. In a system of Freedom, it is important to cast many votes of faith to attain the majority over the freedom of injustice to prevail.
Aphorism of the Day, October 13, 2016
When the Son of Man come, will he find faith? The presence of injustice and the uneven distribution of luck and misfortune throughout the world can result in people not having faith. Injustice and oppression can be reason not to have faith. Conversely, if one lives in the lap of luxury one might not have faith because such easy comfort does not require the growth of any "faith muscles." Cynicism and anger about how unfair life is and entitlement make be threatening circumstances for living with faith. Faith is the attitude of inner contentment which rests upon a vision of hope inspiring positive actions in the "now." Though each person needs to have faith, faith necessarily has collateral salutary effects for one's community.
Aphorism of the Day, October 12, 2016
The freedom of an infinite number of things, events and occasions happening always, already in the now means that our lives can experience things which are beyond our direct control and sometimes the "fate" of things beyond our direct control can be experienced by us as injustice particularly if we believe that other personally directed forces are against our well-being. Prayer is how we use our language to relate to the ultimate Freedom that we live in. Can we still believe ultimate Freedom is a Divine Being which honors us by letting human worth be authenticated by participation in this freedom? Or because there can seem to be an uneven distribution of the events of negative events of freedom, do many decry Freedom as a Fatal Determining Being who seems to have favorites for no reason at all? Prayer is a language of faith of us constituting ourselves and responding to what is happening to us, even as we know we are not exempt from uneven distributions of the weals and woes of what can happen. The reason prayer as faith discourse is important is that it is a talking cure to adjust us to the reality of what is and that adjustment is not just passive paralysis but hopeful response in the best way given the limitations of the situation. Lots of people are crushed in bitterness by not knowing or seeking the recipe for lemonade.
Aphorism of the Day, October 11, 2016
The parable of the persistent widow presents prayer as holy nagging. There is an entire book which consists of lots of "nagging prayer" about how unfair life is. It called the book of Psalms. Prayer as holy nagging is perhaps psychologically healthy; God as the very big ear Therapist listening to endless nagging about how life is unfair to me. God as the Therapist on the other side of our "talking cure prayers" is probably good for social health since God is big enough to take our nagging and our nagging does not do much for relationship with family, friends and colleagues. So let it all out; the Sigmund Divine is ever attending and saying, "uh-huh, and how did that make you feel?"
Aphorism of the Day, October 10, 2016
"Life is not fair." This experience was illustrated in the parable of the widow who continually pleads to a judge for justice. It could be that the only way that life is fair is to say that freedom is fair, freedom is just. Freedom is perhaps the most awesome justice since the free conditions of the world involve people being inhumane with each other and often in harm's way to the terrors of natural events. Freedom assumes time and change and if justice is conceived as a "static" final state, it is incompatible with freedom. Great notions like love and justice need to be explicated within the condition of freedom because human beings cannot rest upon the past events of love and justice; they are continually beckoned to the present and future of love and justice within the conditions of freedom.
Aphorism of the Day, October 9, 2016
The conditions of change in the world means that states of being are continually in flux and crucial events of change are marked in language with words such as birth, sickness, recovery and death. How can life be regarded as healthy in the midst of the changes which are always already inevitable? Faith is the expression of being well, being healthy, being "saved" within the conditions of time=change. There is an unrealistic notion of health and wellness which denies time and change; a holding onto a "static state of perpetual comfort" as the condition of health. Jesus said, "Your faith has made you well." The leper had faith when he was a leper and when he was not one so faith is the "wellness" which embraces all conditions of life. The proverbial Job was "well" with faith, even when all appearances of health and fortune were missing.
Aphorism of the Day, October 8, 2016
For Jesus in the Gospel, being "well" means having faith. The diverse conditions of "health" befall us all in very uneven ways. It is wrong to just present Jesus as one who heals or cures and makes us all better. If healing was permanent, we would never die. This is why we need to look to the Gospel teaching of having faith as the condition of being "well." People with terminal illnesses can still be well. Another Gospel teaching of Jesus about being well is the active faith of the community in including all people with welcome and care. Community faith and community wellness means that we include with care all people in need.
Aphorism of the Day, October 7, 2016
The mention of Samaria and Samaritans in the Luke-Acts writings probably means that early churches included Samaritan members and church gatherings could be found in Samaria. The Gospels as a storied presentation of the life of Jesus to mirror the practices of the early churches means that there is an origin discourse for the encounter of Samaritans with Jesus Christ. Writing Samaritan acceptance of Jesus into the Gospel narrative would express the living oracle of the Risen Christ encountering the Samaritans who actually claimed to have a traditional "Israel" lineage dating from the time of Joshua. The Samaritans in the New Testament are an indication that the Gospel of Christ was appealing to a variety of sects and groups, including Zealots, Pharisees, followers of John the Baptist and Sadducees, plus the Gentiles. Ironically, a Samaritan convert to Christ and a Jewish follower of Christ could say in healing of their ancient division, "In Christ, there is no Jew or Samaritan."
Aphorism of the Day, October 6, 2016
Jesus said to the thankful Samaritan leper who was healed: "Your faith has made you well." This encoded the notion of salvation wellness in the early churches. This was contrasted with the notion of physical and spiritual health being the condition of being certified by the authorities in the classification system of the purity code in Judaism. St. Paul proclaimed that Samaritan and Gentiles could have Abrahamic faith which is what made them well, i.e. saved and acceptable by God. Gentile Christian "wellness" challenged the exclusive system of the purity code for determining salvation wellness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 5, 2016
Under the ritual purity codes, a leper was "unclean" and thus quarantined from society. The ritual purity code functioned as a religious public health taxonomical system. The public needs to be "protected." It is a valid impulse except one of the outcomes was the loss of access of "ritually impure" people to the health of the community. The healing Jesus was first of a person who violated quarantine rules and in his state of healthiness he welcomed those who had been unwelcomed due to the quarantine. Health is not just about a physical "cure;" it is about health as a caring community.
Aphorism of the Day, October 4, 2016
The Gospel stories about Jesus actually encode the dynamics of what was happening in the early churches. 10 lepers were healed by Jesus; only the "foreign" leper returned to say thanks to Jesus. The "foreigners" in the church were ritually impure and segregated from the synagogue and yet these "foreigners" were thanking Jesus for making them clean and pure and acceptable to be included in the fold of God. The ritual meal in the inclusive churches was called "Eucharist" which means "thanksgiving."
Aphorism of the Day, October 3, 2016
The most blatant anachronism of the Gospel writers is the embedding of the Gentile Christianity within the narrative of the life of Jesus. How do the writers artfully try to be true to the Jewishness of Jesus in his own time and yet include in this presentation the subtle suggestion that Jesus was already reaching out to the Gentiles? The writing purpose of the early Christian writers in the way they presented Jesus vis a vis foreigners has to be included in what is regarded to be "inspired." The Gentile mission "inspired" the presentation of the narrative of Jesus in the Gospels.
Aphorism of the Day, October 2, 2016
When the disciple requested of Jesus, "Increase our faith," he essentially said, "Do it yourself." Do it through small individual deeds of faith which collect to become the "increase" of faith that is so desired. There is no easy way for faith to become the character of our lives; we have to practice it so that the quantity of actual faithful deeds result in being the character of our lives and in the uncanny results which can happen because of sustained faithfulness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 1, 2016
Did it ever occur to us that Christian focus upon the afterlife seems to be a contradiction of the serenity prayer? "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." The New Testament writers seem taken up with the afterlife and the impending end of the world as we know it, so how were they using courage to change the things they could change? Can anyone change one's death or one's afterlife. How does one accept death and not presume to know too much about the specifics of the afterlife state of being? The things that we can change pertain how you and I will enter the afterlife. We can change the quality of our life before we die and from that quality assume the best kind of continuity in how we get preserved in God's memory which we hope includes a reconstitution and a continuous recycling towards excellence of Personal life force.
Aphorism of the Day, October 30, 2016
The Gospel present the opponents of Jesus as one who hung out with "sinners." All Gentiles were sinners in that they were ritually impure and defiled people. Also, the Jews who were not ritually observant according to the practice of the prominent religious parties were also "sinners." The Gospels expanded the meaning of "sinner" to all people and is a positive notion because it implied that human beings were imperfect but perfectible. Imperfect people need to be on a path of repentance. Repentance is simply the progressive education program in excellence which involves tolerating oneself in the state of being imperfect because of God's perfect grace. It involves a vision of being so much better that one cannot judge others excepts as others who are trying to deal with their own path of perfectability in equal need of grace.
Aphorism of the Day, October 29, 2016
The 12 step program includes the notion of reparation as a way of rebuilding one's credibility in recovery. The conversion of Zacchaeus inspired him to pay reparations with interest all whom he had cheated. Reparation is a way to rewrite the history of the past through a post-humus generosity to the dead past of one's own unjust behaviors. Generosity of reparation can actually be a form of resurrection.
Aphorism of the Day, October 28, 2016
Zacchaeus is the Saint of Stewardship. He proved that an encounter with Jesus will change your relationship to your money.
Aphorism of the Day, October 27, 2016
UFOologist developed the classification system of "close encounters" with alien life. Bible writers encode their system of classification of close encounters with the "alien" life of God. New Testament writers encode their classification of "close encounters" with the "alien life" of the Risen Christ. Frankly, all encounters are constituted by what makes visible the invisible, name Word and language. We know all encounters in life because we first have language. Once we have language we bring all experience into existence.
Aphorism of the Day, October 26, 2016
The Zacchaeus story recounts the serendipitous events of how he went from being a Jesus watcher from afar to becoming a disciple whose life was radically changed from an intimate encounter with Jesus in his own home. The Zacchaeus story in the Gospel is an announcement to all that having one's life changed by an encounter with Jesus has happened, may happened, will happen to anyone and it will not be exactly like with Zacchaeus because the Risen Christ through the Spirit morphs into the context specifics of anyone who can confess such an encounter.
Aphorism of the Day, October 25, 2016
The Zacchaeus story in the Gospel encapsulates features of the "Gospel seduction" within the early churches. Zacchaeus, a liminal person stuck by the choices of his profession between being a Jew and working for the Romans, is curious about Jesus from afar. Zacchaeus is made to feel chosen when Jesus invites himself into Zacchaeus' life. Jesus visits the home of Zacchaeus and his entire lifestyle is converted: he pays reparations for his over-charging and becomes a generous steward.
Aphorism of the Day, October 24, 2016
The writer of Luke has a "thing" for publicans or tax-collectors. Perhaps it is because they represent the liminal nature of the early church. Tax-collectors were often non-observant Jews who in the Gospel were shown as people who wanted to have some "faith" status. The early Jesus Movement must have embraced these liminal figures on its way to becoming a mostly Gentile community.
Aphorism of the Day, October 23, 2016
Sin and being a sinner can be designated in different ways. A sinner can be a person who does not know the rules I follow and so is different from me and undesirable because my lifestyle rules are inaccessible to such a one and so he is a "sinner" or one outside of my lifestyle rules. A sinner can be one who willfully and purposely does things that violates rules of safety, health and well being of self and others. Or sinner can be a positive state into which all people are born. We are born in the human condition with future states of excellence that we are not yet attaining. Those states of excellence invite us to grow continually in their direction. The New Testament word for sin is an archery term meaning to "miss the mark," or to fall short of the target. This is the perpetual human condition since future excellence, no matter what our state of practice is now, is always a future target at which we will continually aim. As we define a current excellent target and then attain it, in attaining it, it will be further revealed that another future target exposes the inadequacy of what we have attained. This is the nature of learning. Future excellence should always keep us humble about what we have attained and certainly not qualified to judge others who are on other archery ranges in quest of their own targets at their own rates of growth in the life process of spiritual archery.
Aphorism of the Day, October 22, 2016
The New Testament redefines sinner from being but a "ritually" non-observant person to being the state of being imperfect. The positive notion of being a sinner is that the admission of sin means also that one is perfectible. The notions of grace, mercy and forgiveness is that God's perfection is shared with the sinner and so each sinner has the freedom to accept a substitutionary perfection with God, so each person can say, "I'm perfect with God." Perfection is the wholeness that one accepts by acknowledging being made complete by God's grace.
Aphorism of the Day, October 21, 2016
"God be merciful to me a sinner." Failed archers of the world unite! The New Testament world for sin is to fail as an archer to hit the target. So sin can be a positive notion, if the target one is aiming at is the continuously elusive perfection of God. Oops. I missed again but I going to keep shooting my arrows of intentional life deeds toward the excellence which God requires. One can create all sorts of arbitrary targets to shoot out and achieve, e.g., not eating anymore broccoli, and be proud of achieving such "easy" targets. One can judge others for not attaining the easy targets attained in one's own life. But in the game of Ultimate Archery, one's target is the moving target of God's perfection at which one is always aiming and always failing and yet always improving because shooting in the direction of perfection is how we get better. And always missing perfection is how we remain as those who have humble reasons for not judging others who have their own history of "archery" experience.
Aphorism of the Day, October 20, 2016
The panning of religious leaders by Jesus including a parable of comparing favorably the repentant publican with a Pharisee characterized as a "self righteous" prig is indicative of the polemic of the early church in its separation "anxiety" from the synagogue. The early Christian leaders had two shocks: Gentiles were drawn to the message of Jesus and most members of the traditional parties of Judaism were not. So Christianity dismissed the ritual purity codes of Judaism to conform to Gentile Christianity. This scenario forms the ethos of those who generated the writings of the New Testament. Today, we need not identify with the polemic which so informed the separation of synagogue and church.
Aphorism of the Day, October 19, 2016
The negative side of the "insight of sin" is to have the prideful attitude of thinking that one does not have significant sin or judging others for having obviously worse sins than one's own. The positive side of sin is to compare oneself with one future surpassable self in excellence and humbly acknowledge how much more one has to attain that one requests mercy from God and God's patience to allow one to continue to maintain in the life journey of self-surpassability in excellence. The best insight of sin is to compare oneself with oneself and hope for self-surpassability in holiness in the future.
Aphorism of the Day, October 18, 2016
"God be merciful to me a sinner." The realization of sin is a very positive realization since it means that one subscribes to the view of human perfectability, with God's mercy tolerating us and completing us when we are not yet perfect. Perfection then is not an individual quest; it is acceptance of perfection as "wholeness" because we live and move and have our being in God. And an experience within the Holy Ground of God is mercy.
Aphorism of the Day, October 17, 2016
"God be merciful to me a sinner." Knowing that one is a sinner is a positive notion in the Gospel. It means that one realizes that one has not yet attained the more perfect moral targets where one is aiming. Knowing that one is a sinner is the realization that one is "in time." Being "in time" we cannot claim some "static laurels" and judge ourselves as somehow better than others forever. Being "in time" we are invited to the humility of anticipation for future excellent performance.
Aphorism of the Day, October 16, 2016
When things happen to us we tend to take them personally. We may think that God has blessed us or that God or some other agents is punishing us. The Greek personified fate as the Moirai; those divine personal metaphors of destiny. In the Gospel parable of the nagging widow and the judge, the judge represents the personification of the negative probable outcomes which happen in a true system of freedom. All of us have to learn to live in relationship with this judge, the by product of freedom, and when the negative outcomes express deprivation of health, goodness and justice, we need to become the holy naggers who pray continuously for the normalcy of justice, goodness, health and kindness. Such nagging is the free expression of faith geared to help tilt the balance toward justice in the overall environment of real freedom and real possibilities.
Aphorism of the Day, October 15, 2016
Consider the nagging prayers of faith in the face of injustice. Conceive of Reality as a quantity of interacting and mutual occasions. Consider in a free system of interacting occasions the ability for certain qualitative occasions to reach the tipping point of majority such that the qualitative majority begins to tilt the whole in its favor. Adding up the qualitative prayers and actions of faith within the Total Milieu of all occasions means that hopeful outcomes can be effected. When the Son of Man comes will he find faith? God is luring and coaxing us to tip the majority toward just outcomes. Let us prevail in nagging prayers against injustice. Our prayerful "votes of faith" count in the eventual outcomes.
Aphorism of the Day, October 14, 2016
Why is the nagging prayer of faith important within the freedom of injustice being a persistent reality of life? If injustice is an expression of freedom, faith and prayerful faith is also a persistent freedom. It is almost like Jesus is suggesting that when a majority of occasions of faithful prayer makes injustice a minority, then injustice must respond to the events of faith overcoming it. In a system of Freedom, it is important to cast many votes of faith to attain the majority over the freedom of injustice to prevail.
Aphorism of the Day, October 13, 2016
When the Son of Man come, will he find faith? The presence of injustice and the uneven distribution of luck and misfortune throughout the world can result in people not having faith. Injustice and oppression can be reason not to have faith. Conversely, if one lives in the lap of luxury one might not have faith because such easy comfort does not require the growth of any "faith muscles." Cynicism and anger about how unfair life is and entitlement make be threatening circumstances for living with faith. Faith is the attitude of inner contentment which rests upon a vision of hope inspiring positive actions in the "now." Though each person needs to have faith, faith necessarily has collateral salutary effects for one's community.
Aphorism of the Day, October 12, 2016
The freedom of an infinite number of things, events and occasions happening always, already in the now means that our lives can experience things which are beyond our direct control and sometimes the "fate" of things beyond our direct control can be experienced by us as injustice particularly if we believe that other personally directed forces are against our well-being. Prayer is how we use our language to relate to the ultimate Freedom that we live in. Can we still believe ultimate Freedom is a Divine Being which honors us by letting human worth be authenticated by participation in this freedom? Or because there can seem to be an uneven distribution of the events of negative events of freedom, do many decry Freedom as a Fatal Determining Being who seems to have favorites for no reason at all? Prayer is a language of faith of us constituting ourselves and responding to what is happening to us, even as we know we are not exempt from uneven distributions of the weals and woes of what can happen. The reason prayer as faith discourse is important is that it is a talking cure to adjust us to the reality of what is and that adjustment is not just passive paralysis but hopeful response in the best way given the limitations of the situation. Lots of people are crushed in bitterness by not knowing or seeking the recipe for lemonade.
Aphorism of the Day, October 11, 2016
The parable of the persistent widow presents prayer as holy nagging. There is an entire book which consists of lots of "nagging prayer" about how unfair life is. It called the book of Psalms. Prayer as holy nagging is perhaps psychologically healthy; God as the very big ear Therapist listening to endless nagging about how life is unfair to me. God as the Therapist on the other side of our "talking cure prayers" is probably good for social health since God is big enough to take our nagging and our nagging does not do much for relationship with family, friends and colleagues. So let it all out; the Sigmund Divine is ever attending and saying, "uh-huh, and how did that make you feel?"
Aphorism of the Day, October 10, 2016
"Life is not fair." This experience was illustrated in the parable of the widow who continually pleads to a judge for justice. It could be that the only way that life is fair is to say that freedom is fair, freedom is just. Freedom is perhaps the most awesome justice since the free conditions of the world involve people being inhumane with each other and often in harm's way to the terrors of natural events. Freedom assumes time and change and if justice is conceived as a "static" final state, it is incompatible with freedom. Great notions like love and justice need to be explicated within the condition of freedom because human beings cannot rest upon the past events of love and justice; they are continually beckoned to the present and future of love and justice within the conditions of freedom.
Aphorism of the Day, October 9, 2016
The conditions of change in the world means that states of being are continually in flux and crucial events of change are marked in language with words such as birth, sickness, recovery and death. How can life be regarded as healthy in the midst of the changes which are always already inevitable? Faith is the expression of being well, being healthy, being "saved" within the conditions of time=change. There is an unrealistic notion of health and wellness which denies time and change; a holding onto a "static state of perpetual comfort" as the condition of health. Jesus said, "Your faith has made you well." The leper had faith when he was a leper and when he was not one so faith is the "wellness" which embraces all conditions of life. The proverbial Job was "well" with faith, even when all appearances of health and fortune were missing.
Aphorism of the Day, October 8, 2016
For Jesus in the Gospel, being "well" means having faith. The diverse conditions of "health" befall us all in very uneven ways. It is wrong to just present Jesus as one who heals or cures and makes us all better. If healing was permanent, we would never die. This is why we need to look to the Gospel teaching of having faith as the condition of being "well." People with terminal illnesses can still be well. Another Gospel teaching of Jesus about being well is the active faith of the community in including all people with welcome and care. Community faith and community wellness means that we include with care all people in need.
Aphorism of the Day, October 7, 2016
The mention of Samaria and Samaritans in the Luke-Acts writings probably means that early churches included Samaritan members and church gatherings could be found in Samaria. The Gospels as a storied presentation of the life of Jesus to mirror the practices of the early churches means that there is an origin discourse for the encounter of Samaritans with Jesus Christ. Writing Samaritan acceptance of Jesus into the Gospel narrative would express the living oracle of the Risen Christ encountering the Samaritans who actually claimed to have a traditional "Israel" lineage dating from the time of Joshua. The Samaritans in the New Testament are an indication that the Gospel of Christ was appealing to a variety of sects and groups, including Zealots, Pharisees, followers of John the Baptist and Sadducees, plus the Gentiles. Ironically, a Samaritan convert to Christ and a Jewish follower of Christ could say in healing of their ancient division, "In Christ, there is no Jew or Samaritan."
Aphorism of the Day, October 6, 2016
Jesus said to the thankful Samaritan leper who was healed: "Your faith has made you well." This encoded the notion of salvation wellness in the early churches. This was contrasted with the notion of physical and spiritual health being the condition of being certified by the authorities in the classification system of the purity code in Judaism. St. Paul proclaimed that Samaritan and Gentiles could have Abrahamic faith which is what made them well, i.e. saved and acceptable by God. Gentile Christian "wellness" challenged the exclusive system of the purity code for determining salvation wellness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 5, 2016
Under the ritual purity codes, a leper was "unclean" and thus quarantined from society. The ritual purity code functioned as a religious public health taxonomical system. The public needs to be "protected." It is a valid impulse except one of the outcomes was the loss of access of "ritually impure" people to the health of the community. The healing Jesus was first of a person who violated quarantine rules and in his state of healthiness he welcomed those who had been unwelcomed due to the quarantine. Health is not just about a physical "cure;" it is about health as a caring community.
Aphorism of the Day, October 4, 2016
The Gospel stories about Jesus actually encode the dynamics of what was happening in the early churches. 10 lepers were healed by Jesus; only the "foreign" leper returned to say thanks to Jesus. The "foreigners" in the church were ritually impure and segregated from the synagogue and yet these "foreigners" were thanking Jesus for making them clean and pure and acceptable to be included in the fold of God. The ritual meal in the inclusive churches was called "Eucharist" which means "thanksgiving."
Aphorism of the Day, October 3, 2016
The most blatant anachronism of the Gospel writers is the embedding of the Gentile Christianity within the narrative of the life of Jesus. How do the writers artfully try to be true to the Jewishness of Jesus in his own time and yet include in this presentation the subtle suggestion that Jesus was already reaching out to the Gentiles? The writing purpose of the early Christian writers in the way they presented Jesus vis a vis foreigners has to be included in what is regarded to be "inspired." The Gentile mission "inspired" the presentation of the narrative of Jesus in the Gospels.
Aphorism of the Day, October 2, 2016
When the disciple requested of Jesus, "Increase our faith," he essentially said, "Do it yourself." Do it through small individual deeds of faith which collect to become the "increase" of faith that is so desired. There is no easy way for faith to become the character of our lives; we have to practice it so that the quantity of actual faithful deeds result in being the character of our lives and in the uncanny results which can happen because of sustained faithfulness.
Aphorism of the Day, October 1, 2016
Increase our faith." The classical Greek word "pistos" was the goal of rhetoric. "Pistos" means persuasion. Fast forward to the koine Greek of the New Testament and "pistos" means "faith." So what is the relationship between persuasion and faith? Faith is the expression of the constituting motivation of one's life which expresses the degree of persuasion toward the motivating focus. In the Christian community faith was the cumulative constituting faith acts motivated by the hopeful belief in God in Christ such that an undivided persuaded person attained the character of faith to achieve the uncanny results of faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment