Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2018
The writer of the Gospel John understands Jesus to constantly saying, "Don't be literal!" It is not about the water in the well, it is about the fountain springing up from within. It is not about getting bread to eat; it is about Jesus as a living bread and the sustenance for one's spiritual life. So being spiritual means that one can dismiss the physical? No, being spiritual means one takes care of the physical needs in the best actuarial wisdom that one can find and there is no actuarial wisdom in "hoarding" if one is concerned about adequate distributive justice for all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2018
Juvenal wrote about the Roman populace wanting "bread and circuses" with little regard for their cultural heritage and it was important for the Emperor to insure the same for the populace to keep revolt from happening. Jesus, fed the multitude and the populace were both entertained and fed, thus making him the obvious candidate to be their king. The writer of John's Gospel decries literalism; Jesus was not that kind of king. In John's Gospel, Jesus was a Word-King. His words were spirit and life and he wanted to give the constituting words to enter people and change their lives. The authority of Jesus as Word-King in the lives of people was much more profound and enduring than being a "bread and circus" king.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2018
After one has come to the realization that every experience partakes of being language, then it is up to each one to live and use language of values and make the case for the better values and the reasons for those better values. Followers of Jesus from their community solidarity may want to make the case that the most adequate values are love and justice for the common good and pit the adequacy of that view against all others.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2018
In language mysticism or the mysticism of language, it is blessed to arrive at the default position of the interpretative insight of having and using language. Everything after that basic interpretation, over which one has no choice, are other interpretations, some of which are merely the carrying out of the automatic language traditions that one has been taught from birth and others are arriving at a language agency such that one is choosing from a range of possible interpretive screens through which to process data from within and data from without. In language mysticism one arrives at the John 1:1 insight, "And the Word was God."
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2018
The Gospel of John came to textual form and redactions so many decades after the actual life of Jesus, it is a presentation of the life of Jesus to understand how his life was the source of what had become the actual spiritual practices of the churches in the subsequent decades after Jesus. This Gospel is a semiotics or a symbology on the genealogy of the practices of the churches using Hebrew Scriptures and attending traditions (apocrypha and apocalyptic), the life of Jesus interpretatively re-told and the witness of the apostles to present to the user Christo-mystaphiles (lovers of the mystery of Christ within) insights on the transformative practices of the community.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2018
An infant is the passive recipient or object in the process of being coded by language users until the infant attains the age and ability to be a language using coder. Becoming a language coder means that one receives the language traditions of one's environment where one is raised. The language traditions means that one takes on the received interpretations of one's community and the longer one lives, the more one both repeats those received interpretations while at the same time accidentally or purposefully becoming an inventor of new language products inclusive of the individual style of interpretation that one brings to those products. Jesus, in the Gospel, adds language about the memorial experience of one's birth, (a seeming pure primordial state of being) the time before having language and becoming an active interpreter of experience via language. He actually called it a new birth, since it was a forgotten birth due to the layers of interpretations that old men like Nicodemus had accrued to become unable to access the original joy of simply having been born. Yet even the naming of such a new birth was but a insight that was born in signifying words about a mysterious past called in language, "one's birth."
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2018
In the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel of John, if one is being literal, then one is missing the "spiritual" point. Is the multiplication of the loaves literally about regular mass feeding of people so that Jesus can be a good king and provide bread for the populace? No, it is a story to promote the Eucharistic practice of the church in the belief that Jesus is the living bread come down from heaven. In John, Jesus is Word, his words are spirit and life. Christ=Word=God=Life. The Gospel of John is all about Word and how word constitutes human life in the many discursive ways of Word. John uses word, artistically, literarily, not literally and spiritual meanings in the stories of Jesus are the message to those wanting to be mystagogues.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24,2018
As quick to give answers about his theology as Paul seemed to be, he also had lots of disclaimers which proved that he was a "love mystic." In his praise of love, he said he only knew in part while the experience of love was the greatest. He said the love of Christ surpassed all knowledge. He wrote that to love is to fulfill the law. In the end the experience of love was more profound than his writings. Paul's writings could be seen as "community pragmatics" to help the members of the Christian Movement get along with each other and negotiate their own self identity. But Paul in his most profound insights said: It is all about love.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2018
The feeding of the multitude by Jesus in John is one of the signs. Signs in the Gospel of John is the baffling trope to trick people to move from the literal to the spiritual. The literal people wanted to make king because he could provide food; the disciples in the Johannine community were being taught to switch their interpretive mode because the feeding of multitude was a sign of the continuing manna from heaven in the Eucharistic practice of the church. Jesus, himself, was the living bread from heaven. The discerning mystagogue understood the "Sign." Literal interpreters today still want to make Jesus part of a political force to rule "their" world. People still miss the "signs" that are found in John's Gospel.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2018
In medical anthropology, one discovers how culturally conditioned the notions of health, wellness and sickness and disease are. If religious society functions also as "public health" authority and declares sickness as an unclean state that threatens the "healthy" community, then the people who end up being named as unclean and sick have their being totally characterized by the negative that they cannot be well, even if they feel "well" enough to be regarded as worthy of existing within the reciprocity of community. Jesus was one who dismantled the religious medical classification of "unclean" for sick people and he touched them signifying they had a place in his life, in the life of God and in the life of caring community. The faith expressed in Jesus was the ultimate healing "placebo" instantiating the psychosomatic basis of health and illness and the psychosomatic is heavily conditioned by social context in how the language of a culture allows a person to constitute oneself regarding the question "Am I sick or healthy and how do others regard me regarding health and sickness?"
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2018
The writers of the New Testament dealt with the issue of the clash of their Gospel lifestyles with the clash of the values of the dominant culture of the Roman World. On one extreme, one could adopt a separation something like the Amish do in America to avoid interaction with the American culture. One can say to the culture at large, "Come to our enclave and conform to our rule of life, if you want the Gospel." Such tactics do not make the Gospel accessible to the peoples of one's world. John the Baptist seemed to say come to the Jordan wilderness to hear my message; Jesus seemed to say, "Go to the people where they are." Both strategies are found in the New Testament witness and in the history of the church. It is perhaps a question of style, ethos and personality as to the strategies of living in the world and not being of the world. How much of the culture can be "baptized" and integrated as a part of Gospel style? In American Evangelical churches, there was a time when "Rock" or "Popular" music was regarded to be "worldly" or even "satanic." Now every church aspiring to be the proverbial "mega" church is built like a TV studio stage set and filled with guitars, drums and "Rock" music that has been Jesus-ified. The spectacle that was once a "rock concert" is now "church." It may be that the social aspect of being "entertained" is a key aspect of the effervescence of "successful" religious gathering and a key aspect of "entry level" Christianity.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2018
The Gospel present Jesus and the disciples like being the head of ER and residents at a busy Emergency Room in a large city hospital, because they are thronged by sick people. In the Palestine of Jesus' time, one might understand an entire class of people designated as "sick." Under the religious public health classification in the Purity Code, sick meant "unclean" or "defiled" and therefore untouchable, because of the fear of infection and contagion. The sick had to be socially quarantined. The popularity of Jesus was that he was accessible to a class of people who were designated as untouchable. He ate with "sinners" or people designated as "unclean" because they were far from being ritually observant people. He touched the sick and allowed them to touch him, thus breaking the segregation codes which pertained to the class of sick people designated as "unclean." In fact the very essence of the inner personalities of sick people was designated as being "unclean" spirits. By declaring forgiveness for "unclean" sinners and by inviting "unclean" sick people back into community for care and healing, Jesus began the salvation social movement which became the church. The church has often become so concerned about her own "purity codes" and has at times and places become seen as an unwelcoming place for many who don't fit the appearance of the initiation "requirements." Renewal in a salvation social movement is often called for within or without of the church.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2018
From a cursory reading of the Gospels one can get the impression that countless number of people were sick and in need of healing. Sin, sickness and death defined the social conditions meaning that being unhealthy in one's behavioral life, in the aging process of the body and having no vision of afterlife health characterizes the human condition. The witness of Jesus is that behaviors can improve and get better, bodily health can be better when the sick are included in community and not quarantined by religious law, and resurrection heals death by making it a single event in the continuity of a person forever. By presenting a vision of future afterlife health, death is not a sucking final entropy meant to demoralize every human act until it happens; it is a mere event in the future becoming of person.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2018
In an endless chain of interpretation of interpretation of interpretation, where does one stop for making a decision based upon how a particular interpretation directs human agency? In most decision, past redundancies of interpretation have one's decisions on near automatic in the repetitions that are ingrained in memorial traces of our behaviors. A new event of significant agency in one's life involves selection of an interpretation which might be colored by selection of persuasive values. Do I chose out of self interest? Bodily need? Care of others close? Care of a stranger? Preservation and protection? Future well-being? Sacrifice for a common good? Agency ends up being determined by both automatic habits of interpretation and also by the degree of freedom that we have when the tacit knowledge of the exigent circumstances presents a limited number of choices.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2018
Jesus observed the large crowds who were like "sheep without shepherds." Even in our day of widespread education, the masses tend to be sheep who are "either-or" thinkers who can be exploited by leaders who repeat simply phrases as simple "truths" without any critical thinking about logical outcomes. The strongest propaganda agents are advertisers who create the need for products and crowds suddenly feel bereft without such products. In the realm of politics, there is much exploitation of the "crowds" around the world. The early church proposed that Jesus was a "good shepherd" who did not exploit the crowd that was vulnerable; rather Jesus promoted the use of power, wealth and knowledge for the care of people. If people who seem to be in leader positions do not use power, wealth and knowledge to care for those who need it, they are not followers of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2018
In any event there is a string of interpretations of language users. Language is made flesh in bodily response and actions. One's life is constantly constituted by the many interpretations that have been learned such that most seem to the automatic habits of our lives. When the automatic habits seem to be habits of learned fear or aggrandized pride, some deep level re-interpretation must take place to interdict. The beginning of interdiction is the realization that everything is equal in "being an interpretation." From there one moves to assess the values which drive our actions based upon interpretations that we have come to believe are wrong or harmful.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2018
One of most obvious things of life is to realize that we use language to come to the realize that we are using language and using language is the prior condition for anything human at all that can be known. Even to cite the pre-linguistic state of being, we have to have language to state the same. Having language, language having us brings into being all extra-linguistic reality and though language seems to be the subsequent Second, its arrival actually creates the condition of First and Second.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2018
With human language, we name God and lots of other "totalities," probably because we need the imagination of a comprehending view of things to presume to know how all particular things fit together and to posit a way for conflicting human beings to find a way to survive living together. God is the perhaps the most enduring "tactical totality" that has come to human language, even though, having human language is perhaps the most embracing human unifying totality of all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2018
John the Baptist was an unbribed soul and he became popular enough to be arrested. If he had been but a crazy homeless man shouting on the edge of the city, he probably would have been ignored. But his preaching and his utterances had to have been spread wide enough to reach the palace of Herod, particularly John's pronouncement about the impropriety's of Herod's marriage to his brother's wife. Putting John in prison would "shut off" his public voice; beheading him would make his voice go away. But even as Jesus became much more after his death, John the Baptist became much more after his death as his life, ministry and community were perpetuated as the proto-community of Christ. The Gospels trace the origin of the Christian community to their origins within the community of John the Baptist. The closeness of John and Jesus in their friendship was the model of appreciative transitions between the community of John and the community of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2018
King Herod heard about the fame of Jesus and said that he must be John the Baptist, raised from the dead, whom he had beheaded. This observation of Herod certainly functioned to promote the closeness of John with Jesus and would have reinforced the notion that the community of Jesus was the legitimate successor of the community of John the Baptist.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2018
The community of John the Baptist could probably be called the proto-church since their leader issued significant reform for the Judaism of his time. The antipathy expressed between John and the religious authorities and the practice of making everyone a "proselyte" by requiring a baptism for renewal and repentance presaged the later division between the followers of Christ and the synagogue, the coup de grace being the dispensing with the ritual purity requirements for the reception of the Gentiles into the community of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2018
John the Baptist has a marvelous birth story, like that of Isaac and Samuel. Jesus had a miraculous birth story. John the Baptist had a tragic death by decapitation. His death perhaps signaled a significant succession of Jesus in the lives of the former followers of John. The death of Jesus in contrast to the death of John attained redemptive significance and his death became the mystical power to "die" to the selfish self in the theology of Christo-identity of Paul.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2018
John the Baptist gets lots of "ink" in the Gospels, probably because Jesus was a "member" of his community and because the early Christians wanted to appeal to the followers of John to become followers of Jesus. The Gospels present contrasting parallels of the lives of John and Jesus and the success of the Christian communities meant that "take up my cross and follow me" became a catch phrase of discipleship, whereas, "lose your head in decapitation and follow John," did not become a phrase of mysticism for the followers of John.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2018
What is the point of having a rule of life and having daily faithful habits of prayer and study? Faithfulness builds the character of being in a right relationship with God and oneself and this character is crucial to weather the times of failure and success. The character of faithfulness weathers all because one has realized that knowing one's identity with God in Christ is its own reward.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 1018
In human cycles, we can be like people who wish that harvest time could always be and that butterflies could perpetually break forth from cocoons, conveniently dispensing with the former phases which precede harvest or the birth of a butterfly. This lack of patience and tolerance for the developmental cyclic phases in human endeavor indicates a shallow faith which does not take into account the reality of freedom in time for the cycles of time. Modern travel has allowed us to "cheat" time cycles by being able to have our fruit out of season and by knowing that butterflies are being born somewhere all of the time. But in human endeavor and in human society the cycles of conversion to the new require patience. Ironically, Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus were not "ready" for him and neither were all of the villages where Jesus sent his disciples. The conditions of receptivity of the soul are not easy to predict and this means that one has to learn how to be patiently faithful through all of the cycles in the relevance of Gospel becoming manifest for someone.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2018
Each person's life has "timing" for being in the mode to receive new life changing insights. One can preach advanced physics at a child and a child is not ready. Spiritual time is also sensitive; not everyone is ready to be at the same place in the timing of their lives as everyone else. Hard knocks make some people bitter and misanthropic while they make other people empathetic; what determines the particular outcome of processing human experience? Timing for positive transformation of one's life is a mystery for the one being transformed as well as for the discerning evangelists who want to bring good news to people all of the time.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2018
The people of Nazareth could not understand how one of their own could be a carpenter and a rabbi. It is easy to "lock" a person into our own familiar version of who we want them to be. The switch from carpenter to rabbi and traveling itinerant wonder worker was too much for people to allow in social mobility for Jesus. It probably is an indication of how Jesus had remained "hidden" from his own hometown folk. There is envy involved when "one of us" suddenly is getting fame beyond the border of the village where one lives. It is a shame that one can lock oneself away from receiving insights from the people who are most accessible because of pride.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2018
Jesus was regarded to be misunderstood by his hometown residents of Nazareth. They did not know about how he attained his wisdom. Wasn't he just Joe and Mary's boy in the carpenter shop? Jesus was more misunderstood in his own time; he became appropriated and understood in an expansive way as the Risen Christ. However, the Jesus of Nazareth was amazing enough for a minority of people to confess that he had morphed into be the Christ, who was all and in all. How did the historical Jesus morph into the Christification of all? This is totally consistent with the proclamation of Christ as being the Word from the beginning who was God and who created/creates all things as they can be humanly known. That human existence is constituted by Word is a truth which was given an ultimate Personality.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2018
Once a context becomes "Christian," what is often lost is the serendipity of the Gospel becoming relevant in personal ways which are tellingly appropriate to the events of one's life. Many religionists are more interested in "cultural" Christianity for political control rather than letting the winsomeness of the Gospel of love find its place in people's hearts without cultural pressure. Kierkegaard once complained, "All the dogs in Denmark have faith," probably meaning that people had the automatic cultural faith without having the kind of personal faith which dramatically changes one's life towards the values of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2018
"A prophet has no honor in is own country." Such a phrase might mean "familiarity breeds contempt," or a local person who attains fame becomes the target of envy which breeds scorn. The evangelical missions as commanded by Christ had a strategy: Go and stay only where you are accepted. If you are not received then move on. There is timing and serendipity in how a person takes on new information that can "save" one's life in finding a new direction for one's life. One cannot force a person to be in the "receptive" mode; if one can or does then it does not lead to genuine change or conversion. If one converts to please the converter, then the conversion will not be authentic. If one converts because one is forced to convert, then "conversion by oppression" negates the winsomeness of the message.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2018
How did Jesus save people from sin, sickness and death? He relativized these as events with temporal duration by offering them an abundant life which had no duration. So, in sin, sickness and death, Jesus just kept saying, there is Some More. By declaring a perpetual future sin, sickness and death are limited to stages, events and occasions with temporal duration, and they are much less than the Perpetual Future.
The writer of the Gospel John understands Jesus to constantly saying, "Don't be literal!" It is not about the water in the well, it is about the fountain springing up from within. It is not about getting bread to eat; it is about Jesus as a living bread and the sustenance for one's spiritual life. So being spiritual means that one can dismiss the physical? No, being spiritual means one takes care of the physical needs in the best actuarial wisdom that one can find and there is no actuarial wisdom in "hoarding" if one is concerned about adequate distributive justice for all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2018
Juvenal wrote about the Roman populace wanting "bread and circuses" with little regard for their cultural heritage and it was important for the Emperor to insure the same for the populace to keep revolt from happening. Jesus, fed the multitude and the populace were both entertained and fed, thus making him the obvious candidate to be their king. The writer of John's Gospel decries literalism; Jesus was not that kind of king. In John's Gospel, Jesus was a Word-King. His words were spirit and life and he wanted to give the constituting words to enter people and change their lives. The authority of Jesus as Word-King in the lives of people was much more profound and enduring than being a "bread and circus" king.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2018
After one has come to the realization that every experience partakes of being language, then it is up to each one to live and use language of values and make the case for the better values and the reasons for those better values. Followers of Jesus from their community solidarity may want to make the case that the most adequate values are love and justice for the common good and pit the adequacy of that view against all others.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2018
In language mysticism or the mysticism of language, it is blessed to arrive at the default position of the interpretative insight of having and using language. Everything after that basic interpretation, over which one has no choice, are other interpretations, some of which are merely the carrying out of the automatic language traditions that one has been taught from birth and others are arriving at a language agency such that one is choosing from a range of possible interpretive screens through which to process data from within and data from without. In language mysticism one arrives at the John 1:1 insight, "And the Word was God."
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2018
The Gospel of John came to textual form and redactions so many decades after the actual life of Jesus, it is a presentation of the life of Jesus to understand how his life was the source of what had become the actual spiritual practices of the churches in the subsequent decades after Jesus. This Gospel is a semiotics or a symbology on the genealogy of the practices of the churches using Hebrew Scriptures and attending traditions (apocrypha and apocalyptic), the life of Jesus interpretatively re-told and the witness of the apostles to present to the user Christo-mystaphiles (lovers of the mystery of Christ within) insights on the transformative practices of the community.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2018
An infant is the passive recipient or object in the process of being coded by language users until the infant attains the age and ability to be a language using coder. Becoming a language coder means that one receives the language traditions of one's environment where one is raised. The language traditions means that one takes on the received interpretations of one's community and the longer one lives, the more one both repeats those received interpretations while at the same time accidentally or purposefully becoming an inventor of new language products inclusive of the individual style of interpretation that one brings to those products. Jesus, in the Gospel, adds language about the memorial experience of one's birth, (a seeming pure primordial state of being) the time before having language and becoming an active interpreter of experience via language. He actually called it a new birth, since it was a forgotten birth due to the layers of interpretations that old men like Nicodemus had accrued to become unable to access the original joy of simply having been born. Yet even the naming of such a new birth was but a insight that was born in signifying words about a mysterious past called in language, "one's birth."
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2018
In the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel of John, if one is being literal, then one is missing the "spiritual" point. Is the multiplication of the loaves literally about regular mass feeding of people so that Jesus can be a good king and provide bread for the populace? No, it is a story to promote the Eucharistic practice of the church in the belief that Jesus is the living bread come down from heaven. In John, Jesus is Word, his words are spirit and life. Christ=Word=God=Life. The Gospel of John is all about Word and how word constitutes human life in the many discursive ways of Word. John uses word, artistically, literarily, not literally and spiritual meanings in the stories of Jesus are the message to those wanting to be mystagogues.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24,2018
As quick to give answers about his theology as Paul seemed to be, he also had lots of disclaimers which proved that he was a "love mystic." In his praise of love, he said he only knew in part while the experience of love was the greatest. He said the love of Christ surpassed all knowledge. He wrote that to love is to fulfill the law. In the end the experience of love was more profound than his writings. Paul's writings could be seen as "community pragmatics" to help the members of the Christian Movement get along with each other and negotiate their own self identity. But Paul in his most profound insights said: It is all about love.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2018
The feeding of the multitude by Jesus in John is one of the signs. Signs in the Gospel of John is the baffling trope to trick people to move from the literal to the spiritual. The literal people wanted to make king because he could provide food; the disciples in the Johannine community were being taught to switch their interpretive mode because the feeding of multitude was a sign of the continuing manna from heaven in the Eucharistic practice of the church. Jesus, himself, was the living bread from heaven. The discerning mystagogue understood the "Sign." Literal interpreters today still want to make Jesus part of a political force to rule "their" world. People still miss the "signs" that are found in John's Gospel.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2018
In medical anthropology, one discovers how culturally conditioned the notions of health, wellness and sickness and disease are. If religious society functions also as "public health" authority and declares sickness as an unclean state that threatens the "healthy" community, then the people who end up being named as unclean and sick have their being totally characterized by the negative that they cannot be well, even if they feel "well" enough to be regarded as worthy of existing within the reciprocity of community. Jesus was one who dismantled the religious medical classification of "unclean" for sick people and he touched them signifying they had a place in his life, in the life of God and in the life of caring community. The faith expressed in Jesus was the ultimate healing "placebo" instantiating the psychosomatic basis of health and illness and the psychosomatic is heavily conditioned by social context in how the language of a culture allows a person to constitute oneself regarding the question "Am I sick or healthy and how do others regard me regarding health and sickness?"
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2018
The writers of the New Testament dealt with the issue of the clash of their Gospel lifestyles with the clash of the values of the dominant culture of the Roman World. On one extreme, one could adopt a separation something like the Amish do in America to avoid interaction with the American culture. One can say to the culture at large, "Come to our enclave and conform to our rule of life, if you want the Gospel." Such tactics do not make the Gospel accessible to the peoples of one's world. John the Baptist seemed to say come to the Jordan wilderness to hear my message; Jesus seemed to say, "Go to the people where they are." Both strategies are found in the New Testament witness and in the history of the church. It is perhaps a question of style, ethos and personality as to the strategies of living in the world and not being of the world. How much of the culture can be "baptized" and integrated as a part of Gospel style? In American Evangelical churches, there was a time when "Rock" or "Popular" music was regarded to be "worldly" or even "satanic." Now every church aspiring to be the proverbial "mega" church is built like a TV studio stage set and filled with guitars, drums and "Rock" music that has been Jesus-ified. The spectacle that was once a "rock concert" is now "church." It may be that the social aspect of being "entertained" is a key aspect of the effervescence of "successful" religious gathering and a key aspect of "entry level" Christianity.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2018
The Gospel present Jesus and the disciples like being the head of ER and residents at a busy Emergency Room in a large city hospital, because they are thronged by sick people. In the Palestine of Jesus' time, one might understand an entire class of people designated as "sick." Under the religious public health classification in the Purity Code, sick meant "unclean" or "defiled" and therefore untouchable, because of the fear of infection and contagion. The sick had to be socially quarantined. The popularity of Jesus was that he was accessible to a class of people who were designated as untouchable. He ate with "sinners" or people designated as "unclean" because they were far from being ritually observant people. He touched the sick and allowed them to touch him, thus breaking the segregation codes which pertained to the class of sick people designated as "unclean." In fact the very essence of the inner personalities of sick people was designated as being "unclean" spirits. By declaring forgiveness for "unclean" sinners and by inviting "unclean" sick people back into community for care and healing, Jesus began the salvation social movement which became the church. The church has often become so concerned about her own "purity codes" and has at times and places become seen as an unwelcoming place for many who don't fit the appearance of the initiation "requirements." Renewal in a salvation social movement is often called for within or without of the church.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2018
From a cursory reading of the Gospels one can get the impression that countless number of people were sick and in need of healing. Sin, sickness and death defined the social conditions meaning that being unhealthy in one's behavioral life, in the aging process of the body and having no vision of afterlife health characterizes the human condition. The witness of Jesus is that behaviors can improve and get better, bodily health can be better when the sick are included in community and not quarantined by religious law, and resurrection heals death by making it a single event in the continuity of a person forever. By presenting a vision of future afterlife health, death is not a sucking final entropy meant to demoralize every human act until it happens; it is a mere event in the future becoming of person.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2018
In an endless chain of interpretation of interpretation of interpretation, where does one stop for making a decision based upon how a particular interpretation directs human agency? In most decision, past redundancies of interpretation have one's decisions on near automatic in the repetitions that are ingrained in memorial traces of our behaviors. A new event of significant agency in one's life involves selection of an interpretation which might be colored by selection of persuasive values. Do I chose out of self interest? Bodily need? Care of others close? Care of a stranger? Preservation and protection? Future well-being? Sacrifice for a common good? Agency ends up being determined by both automatic habits of interpretation and also by the degree of freedom that we have when the tacit knowledge of the exigent circumstances presents a limited number of choices.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2018
Jesus observed the large crowds who were like "sheep without shepherds." Even in our day of widespread education, the masses tend to be sheep who are "either-or" thinkers who can be exploited by leaders who repeat simply phrases as simple "truths" without any critical thinking about logical outcomes. The strongest propaganda agents are advertisers who create the need for products and crowds suddenly feel bereft without such products. In the realm of politics, there is much exploitation of the "crowds" around the world. The early church proposed that Jesus was a "good shepherd" who did not exploit the crowd that was vulnerable; rather Jesus promoted the use of power, wealth and knowledge for the care of people. If people who seem to be in leader positions do not use power, wealth and knowledge to care for those who need it, they are not followers of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2018
In any event there is a string of interpretations of language users. Language is made flesh in bodily response and actions. One's life is constantly constituted by the many interpretations that have been learned such that most seem to the automatic habits of our lives. When the automatic habits seem to be habits of learned fear or aggrandized pride, some deep level re-interpretation must take place to interdict. The beginning of interdiction is the realization that everything is equal in "being an interpretation." From there one moves to assess the values which drive our actions based upon interpretations that we have come to believe are wrong or harmful.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2018
One of most obvious things of life is to realize that we use language to come to the realize that we are using language and using language is the prior condition for anything human at all that can be known. Even to cite the pre-linguistic state of being, we have to have language to state the same. Having language, language having us brings into being all extra-linguistic reality and though language seems to be the subsequent Second, its arrival actually creates the condition of First and Second.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2018
With human language, we name God and lots of other "totalities," probably because we need the imagination of a comprehending view of things to presume to know how all particular things fit together and to posit a way for conflicting human beings to find a way to survive living together. God is the perhaps the most enduring "tactical totality" that has come to human language, even though, having human language is perhaps the most embracing human unifying totality of all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2018
John the Baptist was an unbribed soul and he became popular enough to be arrested. If he had been but a crazy homeless man shouting on the edge of the city, he probably would have been ignored. But his preaching and his utterances had to have been spread wide enough to reach the palace of Herod, particularly John's pronouncement about the impropriety's of Herod's marriage to his brother's wife. Putting John in prison would "shut off" his public voice; beheading him would make his voice go away. But even as Jesus became much more after his death, John the Baptist became much more after his death as his life, ministry and community were perpetuated as the proto-community of Christ. The Gospels trace the origin of the Christian community to their origins within the community of John the Baptist. The closeness of John and Jesus in their friendship was the model of appreciative transitions between the community of John and the community of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2018
King Herod heard about the fame of Jesus and said that he must be John the Baptist, raised from the dead, whom he had beheaded. This observation of Herod certainly functioned to promote the closeness of John with Jesus and would have reinforced the notion that the community of Jesus was the legitimate successor of the community of John the Baptist.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2018
The community of John the Baptist could probably be called the proto-church since their leader issued significant reform for the Judaism of his time. The antipathy expressed between John and the religious authorities and the practice of making everyone a "proselyte" by requiring a baptism for renewal and repentance presaged the later division between the followers of Christ and the synagogue, the coup de grace being the dispensing with the ritual purity requirements for the reception of the Gentiles into the community of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2018
John the Baptist has a marvelous birth story, like that of Isaac and Samuel. Jesus had a miraculous birth story. John the Baptist had a tragic death by decapitation. His death perhaps signaled a significant succession of Jesus in the lives of the former followers of John. The death of Jesus in contrast to the death of John attained redemptive significance and his death became the mystical power to "die" to the selfish self in the theology of Christo-identity of Paul.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2018
John the Baptist gets lots of "ink" in the Gospels, probably because Jesus was a "member" of his community and because the early Christians wanted to appeal to the followers of John to become followers of Jesus. The Gospels present contrasting parallels of the lives of John and Jesus and the success of the Christian communities meant that "take up my cross and follow me" became a catch phrase of discipleship, whereas, "lose your head in decapitation and follow John," did not become a phrase of mysticism for the followers of John.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2018
What is the point of having a rule of life and having daily faithful habits of prayer and study? Faithfulness builds the character of being in a right relationship with God and oneself and this character is crucial to weather the times of failure and success. The character of faithfulness weathers all because one has realized that knowing one's identity with God in Christ is its own reward.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 1018
In human cycles, we can be like people who wish that harvest time could always be and that butterflies could perpetually break forth from cocoons, conveniently dispensing with the former phases which precede harvest or the birth of a butterfly. This lack of patience and tolerance for the developmental cyclic phases in human endeavor indicates a shallow faith which does not take into account the reality of freedom in time for the cycles of time. Modern travel has allowed us to "cheat" time cycles by being able to have our fruit out of season and by knowing that butterflies are being born somewhere all of the time. But in human endeavor and in human society the cycles of conversion to the new require patience. Ironically, Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus were not "ready" for him and neither were all of the villages where Jesus sent his disciples. The conditions of receptivity of the soul are not easy to predict and this means that one has to learn how to be patiently faithful through all of the cycles in the relevance of Gospel becoming manifest for someone.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2018
Each person's life has "timing" for being in the mode to receive new life changing insights. One can preach advanced physics at a child and a child is not ready. Spiritual time is also sensitive; not everyone is ready to be at the same place in the timing of their lives as everyone else. Hard knocks make some people bitter and misanthropic while they make other people empathetic; what determines the particular outcome of processing human experience? Timing for positive transformation of one's life is a mystery for the one being transformed as well as for the discerning evangelists who want to bring good news to people all of the time.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2018
The people of Nazareth could not understand how one of their own could be a carpenter and a rabbi. It is easy to "lock" a person into our own familiar version of who we want them to be. The switch from carpenter to rabbi and traveling itinerant wonder worker was too much for people to allow in social mobility for Jesus. It probably is an indication of how Jesus had remained "hidden" from his own hometown folk. There is envy involved when "one of us" suddenly is getting fame beyond the border of the village where one lives. It is a shame that one can lock oneself away from receiving insights from the people who are most accessible because of pride.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2018
Jesus was regarded to be misunderstood by his hometown residents of Nazareth. They did not know about how he attained his wisdom. Wasn't he just Joe and Mary's boy in the carpenter shop? Jesus was more misunderstood in his own time; he became appropriated and understood in an expansive way as the Risen Christ. However, the Jesus of Nazareth was amazing enough for a minority of people to confess that he had morphed into be the Christ, who was all and in all. How did the historical Jesus morph into the Christification of all? This is totally consistent with the proclamation of Christ as being the Word from the beginning who was God and who created/creates all things as they can be humanly known. That human existence is constituted by Word is a truth which was given an ultimate Personality.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2018
Once a context becomes "Christian," what is often lost is the serendipity of the Gospel becoming relevant in personal ways which are tellingly appropriate to the events of one's life. Many religionists are more interested in "cultural" Christianity for political control rather than letting the winsomeness of the Gospel of love find its place in people's hearts without cultural pressure. Kierkegaard once complained, "All the dogs in Denmark have faith," probably meaning that people had the automatic cultural faith without having the kind of personal faith which dramatically changes one's life towards the values of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2018
"A prophet has no honor in is own country." Such a phrase might mean "familiarity breeds contempt," or a local person who attains fame becomes the target of envy which breeds scorn. The evangelical missions as commanded by Christ had a strategy: Go and stay only where you are accepted. If you are not received then move on. There is timing and serendipity in how a person takes on new information that can "save" one's life in finding a new direction for one's life. One cannot force a person to be in the "receptive" mode; if one can or does then it does not lead to genuine change or conversion. If one converts to please the converter, then the conversion will not be authentic. If one converts because one is forced to convert, then "conversion by oppression" negates the winsomeness of the message.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2018
How did Jesus save people from sin, sickness and death? He relativized these as events with temporal duration by offering them an abundant life which had no duration. So, in sin, sickness and death, Jesus just kept saying, there is Some More. By declaring a perpetual future sin, sickness and death are limited to stages, events and occasions with temporal duration, and they are much less than the Perpetual Future.
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