Aphorism of the Day, December 31, 2018
Stories invite elaboration in their re-telling and their application in new contexts. Sometimes we are so fascinated with the story, we might neglect to consider the teaching goal of the story by the original writer. Case in point: The magi. They became the Three Kings when the attempt was made to line it up with Hebrew Scripture motifs. They became "three" in number when identified with the three different gifts, and probably lost was the details of the likely caravan of many who would have traveled together in their time. But stories don't need to include all of the practical details. The magi eventual attained names and places of origin. Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar. And for lack of scenery space in church chancels they get placed at the manger with the shepherds and the sheep. But what did the Gospel writers intend? The Epiphany or the manifestation of Christ to the "nations." The magi signified that Christ was God universally offered to everyone. The star that people follow is the interior star of the image of the divine within each person that locates the manger of Christ within one's heart.
Aphorism of the Day, December 30, 2018
In the beginning was all of the possible Scripts of life and from all possible Scripts the script of freedom resulted in some actual scripts coming into being and some actual scripts will come into being in the future. People are scripts who have scripts and though we have our limits, we have within those limits, significant freedom to choose the scripts which we want to guide our lives. Like an very particular actor, one can reject scripts which are not fitting.
Aphorism of the Day, December 29, 2018
"And the Word was God. All things came into being through the Word." There is a world outside of words but one has to use words to say and realize it. One does not even escape words in claiming an "independent" Signified.
Aphorism of the the Day, December 28, 2018
"Nice play, Shakespeare," is often said in jest and irony because we regard Shakespeare to be the premiere playwright of the English language. A chief biblical metaphor might be God as the Playwright who has Word as a Divine Equal because Word is the means of speaking living scripts of events and occasion into existence within human experience, or as Heidegger wrote, "Language is the House of Being." Being would be "an empty space" if the walls and ceilings and roofs of language did not tell us it was there. If God is the eternal Word who has spoken our life scripts into being known as life scripts by human actors, we the actors live trying to interpret the meaning of the original Playwright. The limits that we have are the language products of speech, writing, interpreting what our external and internal senses process and our body language deeds. As actors we have freedom to interpret the script given to us and we do so by the mutual influence of co-actors. If God is the eternal Word and we are Word products/producers, we owe it to God to be sublime language used and users.
Aphorism of the Day, December 27, 2018
The Book of Proverbs are words in the quest of Wisdom. For the writer of Proverbs Wisdom is a Divine manifestation who says: "The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago." If Word is God from the beginning and all things come into being through Word, that is existence as it can be humanly known, then the proper ordering of words would be called Wisdom. Wisdom is the invitation in life to make the very best possible arrangement of words in our speech, writing and body language actual in lives of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, December 26, 2018
St. Stephen is probably responsible in his death for the conversion of Saul. Saul knew the law and the commandment, "thou shalt not kill." And he found himself in the banal normalcy of participating in the stoning of Stephen, a "heretic" to what Saul thought was God's Judaism. But when the background banality of killing Stephen was foregrounded into Saul's conscience the contradiction made him vulnerable to his Christophany on the road to Damascus. When his participation in murder in such a casual way lost in an anonymity that one receives in a mob, Saul entire psychical life cracked. And he was put back together again by experiencing forgiveness. He was "fortunate" that there was not a justice system which charged him as a co-conspirator in murder, convict him and punish him. But forever in a state of forgiveness, Paul referred to himself as the "chief of sinners."
Aphorism of the Day, December 25, 2018
Before Bethlehem was written about in the Gospels, the birth of Risen Christ happened in the lives of many people. And it kept happening and it created communities in many places. And these communities wanted to teach the mysticism of the birth of Christ into their lives to anyone who would want to have this experience. The Christmas stories are teaching stories about the mystical birth of Christ into the lives of the willing to let it be according to God's word.
Aphorism of the Day, December 24, 2018
Interesting Trinitarian problem arises when appropriating names for Jesus from the prophet Isaiah. A child has been born for us who shall be Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Certainly one can say that Jesus is the original church "Father," but the Everlasting Father title would more likely designate another member of the Christian Trinity.
Aphorism of the Day, December 23, 2018
The ascendancy of the "plain reading" of biblical texts coupled with modern historicism and scientific method has led to the diminishing of the poetic and mystagogic appropriation of the biblical writings and so poetic discourse is misread as empirical verification. And we're still looking for unicorns.
Aphorism of the Day, December 22, 2018
The Gospel preachers and writers were very inventive in their appeals to the members of the community of John the Baptist to become followers of Jesus in John's posthumous days. If John the Baptist was able to recognize Jesus when both he and Jesus were still in the womb, that is quite some sign.
Aphorism of the Day, December 21, 2018
If followers of John the Baptist were wondering if they should follow Jesus, what appeal would convince them? How about gestational John the gymnast? When the mother of John, Elizabeth met with Mary who was with child, John the gestational gymnast in Elizabeth leapt in recognition of Mary and the One whom she carried. So the pre-born John recognized the pre-born Jesus. This is why followers of John the Baptist should move on and follow Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, December 20, 2018
He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Mary's prayer is a prayer of the lowly for an enhanced sense of esteem that can only come from realizing that the over-shadowing Spirit has birthed within oneself the divine presence, or the Christ who is all and in all, rises to enhanced recognition in the soul.
Aphorism of the Day, December 19, 2018
It is interesting to note the aspirational use of the present perfect tense in the Magnificat. "HE" (God) has shown strength, has brought down, has filled, has scattered.... Faith is proclaiming the not yet as the already will of God because faith is always pointed toward the perfect direction of Hope. This is perhaps why people of faith come off as Quixotic because they choose to express aspiration in the direction of utopia rather than dystopia. The utopian inspires as different kind of present action than the perpetual focus upon dystopia. Dystopia is the fearful vision which can inspire actuarial wisdom for current living because freedom permits negative outcomes life based upon dystopia breed perpetual cynicism and the misanthropic.
Aphorism of the Day, December 18, 2018
The Bible is a collection of writings which developed within diverse communities even while there is a unity of motifs and genre. The marvelous/miraculous birth motif is a repeated motif to retroactively extolle why a certain person became great. Such motifs are expressed in the words like, "when you were still in the womb I knew you." Marvelous and miraculous birth motifs are also accompanied with the genre of songs of praise, e.g., Hannah, Zechariah, Mary and Simeon. These songs proclaim the special providence of the newly born and the vindication of those who have suffered.
Aphorism of the Day, December 17, 2018
Often Isaac, Samuel, John the Baptist and Jesus are presented as those who had marvelous or miraculous births. This is probably a mischaracterization since births happen in the natural ways that they do, i.e, in how baby arrives from inside of mother to the outside world. The marvelous or miraculous or immaculate conceptions seem to be the issue. When a great person, an unsurpassed great person is born, then the story of the origin of must be that the divine necessarily was involved in some providential way at the origin of a child or the child conception. In a strange way, post-Pentecostal Christianity changed the meaning of conception stories. Each person is over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit to have the Risen Christ conceived/born within one's inner life as it is constituted by words, which is why Christ is also called The WORD who was with God and who was God from the beginning (as human know beginning because they first have language).
Aphorism of the Day, December 16, 2018
John the Baptist is presented by the Gospel writer as one who did not have a Messiah Complex. He is presented as the one who pointed to Jesus the Messiah who could do an inside job upon us. Surely such presentation stemmed from the mystical experience of the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This mystical practice and understanding of the same came to be presented in the Gospel story form and John the Baptist is viewed as the bridge to Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, December 15, 2018
The Gospels record that people asked John the Baptist if he were the Messiah? What does this mean? The presence of the question reveals that people were expecting the Messiah. That John was considered a candidate for being the Messiah meant that he must have made a significant impact upon the people of his era such that he would be a "contender?" How did John characterize the Messiah in contrast to his own ministry? John was a "water baptizer," and Jesus was a "Spirit baptizer." The Christian Messiah was the Risen Christ born in the lives of people after the conceiving event of being over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit. One can see in the discourse of John the Baptist, the words of the early church explaining how they understood their mysticism.
Aphorism of the Day, December 14, 2018
The stinging harsh words of John the Baptist and Jesus have to be reassessed in light of them being the oracles of the same being channeled by early church preachers and writers who lived after the church/synagogue split. In the wake of immediate separation, the words are perhaps harsher and the historical consequence of the harshness has been manifest in how Christian majorities treated Jewish minorities.
Aphorism of the Day, December 13, 2018
John the Baptist says to a crowd, "You brood of vipers..." This is like saying you offspring of that serpent who deceived Adam and Eve, a rather harsh judgment indeed. This raises the issues of the harsh pronouncements of prophets against their own religious and political establishments in their time. There is the sentiment that one can criticize the members of one's own family but one comes to the defense of one's family, even if flawed, when outsiders criticize a family member. John the Baptist and Jesus were Jews offering prophetic criticism of the religious authorities of the Jews in their own time, but when they appear in the Gospels, they are presented by members of the Jesus Movement who have left or are leaving or have been excommunicated by the synagogue. Are the words of John the Baptist and Jesus then out of context when they are presented by members who have left the synagogue? One can note how Gospel words have been used by Church and State to mistreat Jewish minorities, and therefore it is very important note the different missions of Judaism and Christianity which came after their separation. The ancient separation and the rhetoric of that separation must not be used for oppression of another community. Any oppression betrays a belief in the providential winsomeness of the message to the people for whom the message comes to benefit.
Aphorism of the Day, December 12, 2018
The Gospels are discourses of the early Christians asking, "How did we get to where we are?" And where were they? They were a burgeoning movement with no signs of decreasing and they were in need of "origin" discourses to explain to new members how they had come to be the movement that they had become. How did they become separated from the synagogue? In part the separation began with John the Baptist and his community which were a separation movement within Judaism which started as a radical reform but became a "proto-church" when John was gone and when members of his community made their way to the communities of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, December 11, 2018
John the Baptist as the bridge to Jesus can also be seen a bridge that was burned for followers of Christ ever being able to return to Judaism. John is quoted as saying that the ax was lying at the root of the tree (of Judaism) ready to be a stump into which Gentile Christianity would be grafted. One can find Paul's theology of Gentile Christianity represented in the ministry of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is a polemical figure who is presented as one who prepared the way for the separation of the church and synagogue.
Aphorism of the Day, December 10, 2018
Providence or favorable aftermath sometimes clouds or overturns the stark reality of what actually happened. John the Baptist as an itinerant firebrand prophet who gathered crowds during the time of Roman occupation was a threat to the rather tenuous situation for the Jewish religious coalition of the Sanhedrin that wanted to avoid any gathering of crowds which would bring Roman disapproval. The fact that John drew crowds before Jesus drew crowds was a prelude to the popularity of Jesus being interpreted by the Romans as an insurrection which needed to stopped by removing the leader through crucifixion.
Aphorism of the Day, December 9, 2018
The church and any organization can accrue much in our histories. We can begin to carry lots of baggage and slowly the task of carrying our baggage make us forget that we are really here to make the journey directly to God; we are not here to do luggage shopping.
Aphorism of the Day, December 8, 2018
The importance of John the Baptist was articulated by the early church as it explicated the outcome of the success of Jesus Christ in his post-resurrection mode. In face of the rejection of Christ by many in the synagogues, the community of John the Baptist were more likely to convert to the Jesus Movement and so John the Baptist and his community are presented as a "seamless" transition to the Jesus Movement. The emphasis upon "individual" repentance for spiritual validation rather than the automatic validation through birth into Judaism was a prelude to the individual faith event that Paul saw as the validation of Gentile inclusion in salvation history. John the Baptist's stress on "individualism" in matters of faith was seen as a set up for the Jesus Movement which moved far beyond the synagogue community.
Aphorism of the Day, December 7, 2018
Repentance is a word that for some has a bad reputation. It is associated with the one's past sins for which one is supposed to grovel in penitential reparations. The word itself is very "futuristic." The Greek word is "meta-noia," or the after mind, the future mind or as St. Paul wrote, "be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Repentance is literally the renewal of one's mind which expresses what education really means. Such a view is based upon the location of the "mind" as being a command center which works with the emotions and the will to expedite what one actually does with the entire body language of one's life. The mind might be an interior place where the synthesis of language events collects information and creates the interior hierarchies which results in the volitional expression of the priorities of one's life to the point of driving the words and deeds of one's life toward the coalescing of the character of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, December 6, 2018
In hagiography, the most made-over saint of all is probably Nicholas of Myra who after many cultural make-overs to be the Dutch Sinterclaus, became the most famous secular saint in the world, the commercial world. One could say he is the Mad Saint, aka the Madison Avenue saint whose Americanization has elevated him to rivaling popularity with the Christ Child at Christmas. Santa Claus has been exported around the world as lots of country need American Christmas excess to build all of the trinkets which the mythical Santa Claus delivers, not with angels, but with flying reindeer and elves. If one believes that the Virgin Birth is fantastical, what about Santa Claus? At what age does a child reach doubt about the reliability of empirical verification of Santa in your household?
Aphorism of the Day, December 5, 2018
One of the schizoidal results of people who limit themselves to biblical piety or who try to privilege biblical language to equality with empirical verification in all applications, is that one is trying to cram rounded poetry into the square hole of places where it does not fit. "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." What does that literally mean except a poetic aspiration for everyone who ever is born to know an enlightened original health as intended by the One who is the greatest? What is empirical about aspirations is that people have aspirations which come to poetic verse; what is expressed in poetry is the fact that people are constructed to have all manner of imaginations which function for their existence. The human task partly involves how to weave the imaginations as they arise out of the great imagination maker, Language itself.
Aphorism of the Day, December 4, 2018
The long history of religious faith in societies at different times means that institutions grow and accrue lots of extraneous practices and pieties which subtly become elevated in importance even to the point of covering up what is central to faith. Reformers like to return to the quickest route, "as the crow" flies. John the Baptist was regarded to be such a reformer; no more long journey on a curvy path with detours, no more high mountains or low valleys to impede the direct arrival. If John the Baptist were a piece of machinery, according to the Isaiah passage, he would be a "bulldozer." He was to make the path straight and direct.
Aphorism of the Day, December 3, 2018
How does the Gospel of Luke describe the ascendance of John the Baptist in becoming a "bridge" person to Jesus of Nazareth? Luke wrote, "the word of God came to John." The word was "like" the words of the prophets but it was unique in its "liturgical" innovation. John made everyone including the Jews go through what had heretofore been required of proselytes to Judaism; he made everyone undergo "mikvah" or baptism in the living waters of the Jordan. To treat his fellow Jews as proselytes to Judaism was a prologue to the redefinition of the church being the new Israel. John could be seen as a "bridge" to Jesus, but he also could be understood as one who began to initiate the re-interpretation of the themes of Hebrew Scriptures in a way that eventually could no longer be called Judaism in Gentile Christianity.
Aphorism of the Day, December 2, 2018
Jesus said that the trees on the leaves change and they mark a seasonal change and we can read these natural signs. He also invited us to learn how to read more complicated signs found in human life cycles both personally and as communities of people. The oft fickleness of human behaviors, though repetitive in nature, are not also so easy to read and predict as are the cycles of nature. A goal of living is to attain the gradual actuarial wisdom from our observation of probable outcomes so that we can wisely ponder how to respond to the next transitions which await us in our lives.
Aphorism of the Day, December 1, 2018
The cultural effect of deconstructive postmodernism is to live on the surface of everything. Why? In the postmodern world, there is no "inner world of ideals," and no "deep structures" because the access to the "inner world" can only be achieved by generating more "surface" signifiers about the "previously known signified" within the classic and modern systems of processing reality. The solution may be to re-hierarchize the importance of the language signifiers regarding interiority. With language we can elevate the importance of the language of the value of interiority (since language is essentially INTERIORITY), particularly as signifiers represent human solidarities which speak on behalf of what love and justice can mean for everyone.
Stories invite elaboration in their re-telling and their application in new contexts. Sometimes we are so fascinated with the story, we might neglect to consider the teaching goal of the story by the original writer. Case in point: The magi. They became the Three Kings when the attempt was made to line it up with Hebrew Scripture motifs. They became "three" in number when identified with the three different gifts, and probably lost was the details of the likely caravan of many who would have traveled together in their time. But stories don't need to include all of the practical details. The magi eventual attained names and places of origin. Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar. And for lack of scenery space in church chancels they get placed at the manger with the shepherds and the sheep. But what did the Gospel writers intend? The Epiphany or the manifestation of Christ to the "nations." The magi signified that Christ was God universally offered to everyone. The star that people follow is the interior star of the image of the divine within each person that locates the manger of Christ within one's heart.
Aphorism of the Day, December 30, 2018
In the beginning was all of the possible Scripts of life and from all possible Scripts the script of freedom resulted in some actual scripts coming into being and some actual scripts will come into being in the future. People are scripts who have scripts and though we have our limits, we have within those limits, significant freedom to choose the scripts which we want to guide our lives. Like an very particular actor, one can reject scripts which are not fitting.
Aphorism of the Day, December 29, 2018
"And the Word was God. All things came into being through the Word." There is a world outside of words but one has to use words to say and realize it. One does not even escape words in claiming an "independent" Signified.
Aphorism of the the Day, December 28, 2018
"Nice play, Shakespeare," is often said in jest and irony because we regard Shakespeare to be the premiere playwright of the English language. A chief biblical metaphor might be God as the Playwright who has Word as a Divine Equal because Word is the means of speaking living scripts of events and occasion into existence within human experience, or as Heidegger wrote, "Language is the House of Being." Being would be "an empty space" if the walls and ceilings and roofs of language did not tell us it was there. If God is the eternal Word who has spoken our life scripts into being known as life scripts by human actors, we the actors live trying to interpret the meaning of the original Playwright. The limits that we have are the language products of speech, writing, interpreting what our external and internal senses process and our body language deeds. As actors we have freedom to interpret the script given to us and we do so by the mutual influence of co-actors. If God is the eternal Word and we are Word products/producers, we owe it to God to be sublime language used and users.
Aphorism of the Day, December 27, 2018
The Book of Proverbs are words in the quest of Wisdom. For the writer of Proverbs Wisdom is a Divine manifestation who says: "The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago." If Word is God from the beginning and all things come into being through Word, that is existence as it can be humanly known, then the proper ordering of words would be called Wisdom. Wisdom is the invitation in life to make the very best possible arrangement of words in our speech, writing and body language actual in lives of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, December 26, 2018
St. Stephen is probably responsible in his death for the conversion of Saul. Saul knew the law and the commandment, "thou shalt not kill." And he found himself in the banal normalcy of participating in the stoning of Stephen, a "heretic" to what Saul thought was God's Judaism. But when the background banality of killing Stephen was foregrounded into Saul's conscience the contradiction made him vulnerable to his Christophany on the road to Damascus. When his participation in murder in such a casual way lost in an anonymity that one receives in a mob, Saul entire psychical life cracked. And he was put back together again by experiencing forgiveness. He was "fortunate" that there was not a justice system which charged him as a co-conspirator in murder, convict him and punish him. But forever in a state of forgiveness, Paul referred to himself as the "chief of sinners."
Aphorism of the Day, December 25, 2018
Before Bethlehem was written about in the Gospels, the birth of Risen Christ happened in the lives of many people. And it kept happening and it created communities in many places. And these communities wanted to teach the mysticism of the birth of Christ into their lives to anyone who would want to have this experience. The Christmas stories are teaching stories about the mystical birth of Christ into the lives of the willing to let it be according to God's word.
Aphorism of the Day, December 24, 2018
Interesting Trinitarian problem arises when appropriating names for Jesus from the prophet Isaiah. A child has been born for us who shall be Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Certainly one can say that Jesus is the original church "Father," but the Everlasting Father title would more likely designate another member of the Christian Trinity.
Aphorism of the Day, December 23, 2018
The ascendancy of the "plain reading" of biblical texts coupled with modern historicism and scientific method has led to the diminishing of the poetic and mystagogic appropriation of the biblical writings and so poetic discourse is misread as empirical verification. And we're still looking for unicorns.
Aphorism of the Day, December 22, 2018
The Gospel preachers and writers were very inventive in their appeals to the members of the community of John the Baptist to become followers of Jesus in John's posthumous days. If John the Baptist was able to recognize Jesus when both he and Jesus were still in the womb, that is quite some sign.
Aphorism of the Day, December 21, 2018
If followers of John the Baptist were wondering if they should follow Jesus, what appeal would convince them? How about gestational John the gymnast? When the mother of John, Elizabeth met with Mary who was with child, John the gestational gymnast in Elizabeth leapt in recognition of Mary and the One whom she carried. So the pre-born John recognized the pre-born Jesus. This is why followers of John the Baptist should move on and follow Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, December 20, 2018
He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Mary's prayer is a prayer of the lowly for an enhanced sense of esteem that can only come from realizing that the over-shadowing Spirit has birthed within oneself the divine presence, or the Christ who is all and in all, rises to enhanced recognition in the soul.
Aphorism of the Day, December 19, 2018
It is interesting to note the aspirational use of the present perfect tense in the Magnificat. "HE" (God) has shown strength, has brought down, has filled, has scattered.... Faith is proclaiming the not yet as the already will of God because faith is always pointed toward the perfect direction of Hope. This is perhaps why people of faith come off as Quixotic because they choose to express aspiration in the direction of utopia rather than dystopia. The utopian inspires as different kind of present action than the perpetual focus upon dystopia. Dystopia is the fearful vision which can inspire actuarial wisdom for current living because freedom permits negative outcomes life based upon dystopia breed perpetual cynicism and the misanthropic.
Aphorism of the Day, December 18, 2018
The Bible is a collection of writings which developed within diverse communities even while there is a unity of motifs and genre. The marvelous/miraculous birth motif is a repeated motif to retroactively extolle why a certain person became great. Such motifs are expressed in the words like, "when you were still in the womb I knew you." Marvelous and miraculous birth motifs are also accompanied with the genre of songs of praise, e.g., Hannah, Zechariah, Mary and Simeon. These songs proclaim the special providence of the newly born and the vindication of those who have suffered.
Aphorism of the Day, December 17, 2018
Often Isaac, Samuel, John the Baptist and Jesus are presented as those who had marvelous or miraculous births. This is probably a mischaracterization since births happen in the natural ways that they do, i.e, in how baby arrives from inside of mother to the outside world. The marvelous or miraculous or immaculate conceptions seem to be the issue. When a great person, an unsurpassed great person is born, then the story of the origin of must be that the divine necessarily was involved in some providential way at the origin of a child or the child conception. In a strange way, post-Pentecostal Christianity changed the meaning of conception stories. Each person is over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit to have the Risen Christ conceived/born within one's inner life as it is constituted by words, which is why Christ is also called The WORD who was with God and who was God from the beginning (as human know beginning because they first have language).
Aphorism of the Day, December 16, 2018
John the Baptist is presented by the Gospel writer as one who did not have a Messiah Complex. He is presented as the one who pointed to Jesus the Messiah who could do an inside job upon us. Surely such presentation stemmed from the mystical experience of the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This mystical practice and understanding of the same came to be presented in the Gospel story form and John the Baptist is viewed as the bridge to Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, December 15, 2018
The Gospels record that people asked John the Baptist if he were the Messiah? What does this mean? The presence of the question reveals that people were expecting the Messiah. That John was considered a candidate for being the Messiah meant that he must have made a significant impact upon the people of his era such that he would be a "contender?" How did John characterize the Messiah in contrast to his own ministry? John was a "water baptizer," and Jesus was a "Spirit baptizer." The Christian Messiah was the Risen Christ born in the lives of people after the conceiving event of being over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit. One can see in the discourse of John the Baptist, the words of the early church explaining how they understood their mysticism.
Aphorism of the Day, December 14, 2018
The stinging harsh words of John the Baptist and Jesus have to be reassessed in light of them being the oracles of the same being channeled by early church preachers and writers who lived after the church/synagogue split. In the wake of immediate separation, the words are perhaps harsher and the historical consequence of the harshness has been manifest in how Christian majorities treated Jewish minorities.
Aphorism of the Day, December 13, 2018
John the Baptist says to a crowd, "You brood of vipers..." This is like saying you offspring of that serpent who deceived Adam and Eve, a rather harsh judgment indeed. This raises the issues of the harsh pronouncements of prophets against their own religious and political establishments in their time. There is the sentiment that one can criticize the members of one's own family but one comes to the defense of one's family, even if flawed, when outsiders criticize a family member. John the Baptist and Jesus were Jews offering prophetic criticism of the religious authorities of the Jews in their own time, but when they appear in the Gospels, they are presented by members of the Jesus Movement who have left or are leaving or have been excommunicated by the synagogue. Are the words of John the Baptist and Jesus then out of context when they are presented by members who have left the synagogue? One can note how Gospel words have been used by Church and State to mistreat Jewish minorities, and therefore it is very important note the different missions of Judaism and Christianity which came after their separation. The ancient separation and the rhetoric of that separation must not be used for oppression of another community. Any oppression betrays a belief in the providential winsomeness of the message to the people for whom the message comes to benefit.
Aphorism of the Day, December 12, 2018
The Gospels are discourses of the early Christians asking, "How did we get to where we are?" And where were they? They were a burgeoning movement with no signs of decreasing and they were in need of "origin" discourses to explain to new members how they had come to be the movement that they had become. How did they become separated from the synagogue? In part the separation began with John the Baptist and his community which were a separation movement within Judaism which started as a radical reform but became a "proto-church" when John was gone and when members of his community made their way to the communities of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, December 11, 2018
John the Baptist as the bridge to Jesus can also be seen a bridge that was burned for followers of Christ ever being able to return to Judaism. John is quoted as saying that the ax was lying at the root of the tree (of Judaism) ready to be a stump into which Gentile Christianity would be grafted. One can find Paul's theology of Gentile Christianity represented in the ministry of John the Baptist. John the Baptist is a polemical figure who is presented as one who prepared the way for the separation of the church and synagogue.
Aphorism of the Day, December 10, 2018
Providence or favorable aftermath sometimes clouds or overturns the stark reality of what actually happened. John the Baptist as an itinerant firebrand prophet who gathered crowds during the time of Roman occupation was a threat to the rather tenuous situation for the Jewish religious coalition of the Sanhedrin that wanted to avoid any gathering of crowds which would bring Roman disapproval. The fact that John drew crowds before Jesus drew crowds was a prelude to the popularity of Jesus being interpreted by the Romans as an insurrection which needed to stopped by removing the leader through crucifixion.
Aphorism of the Day, December 9, 2018
The church and any organization can accrue much in our histories. We can begin to carry lots of baggage and slowly the task of carrying our baggage make us forget that we are really here to make the journey directly to God; we are not here to do luggage shopping.
Aphorism of the Day, December 8, 2018
The importance of John the Baptist was articulated by the early church as it explicated the outcome of the success of Jesus Christ in his post-resurrection mode. In face of the rejection of Christ by many in the synagogues, the community of John the Baptist were more likely to convert to the Jesus Movement and so John the Baptist and his community are presented as a "seamless" transition to the Jesus Movement. The emphasis upon "individual" repentance for spiritual validation rather than the automatic validation through birth into Judaism was a prelude to the individual faith event that Paul saw as the validation of Gentile inclusion in salvation history. John the Baptist's stress on "individualism" in matters of faith was seen as a set up for the Jesus Movement which moved far beyond the synagogue community.
Aphorism of the Day, December 7, 2018
Repentance is a word that for some has a bad reputation. It is associated with the one's past sins for which one is supposed to grovel in penitential reparations. The word itself is very "futuristic." The Greek word is "meta-noia," or the after mind, the future mind or as St. Paul wrote, "be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Repentance is literally the renewal of one's mind which expresses what education really means. Such a view is based upon the location of the "mind" as being a command center which works with the emotions and the will to expedite what one actually does with the entire body language of one's life. The mind might be an interior place where the synthesis of language events collects information and creates the interior hierarchies which results in the volitional expression of the priorities of one's life to the point of driving the words and deeds of one's life toward the coalescing of the character of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, December 6, 2018
In hagiography, the most made-over saint of all is probably Nicholas of Myra who after many cultural make-overs to be the Dutch Sinterclaus, became the most famous secular saint in the world, the commercial world. One could say he is the Mad Saint, aka the Madison Avenue saint whose Americanization has elevated him to rivaling popularity with the Christ Child at Christmas. Santa Claus has been exported around the world as lots of country need American Christmas excess to build all of the trinkets which the mythical Santa Claus delivers, not with angels, but with flying reindeer and elves. If one believes that the Virgin Birth is fantastical, what about Santa Claus? At what age does a child reach doubt about the reliability of empirical verification of Santa in your household?
Aphorism of the Day, December 5, 2018
One of the schizoidal results of people who limit themselves to biblical piety or who try to privilege biblical language to equality with empirical verification in all applications, is that one is trying to cram rounded poetry into the square hole of places where it does not fit. "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." What does that literally mean except a poetic aspiration for everyone who ever is born to know an enlightened original health as intended by the One who is the greatest? What is empirical about aspirations is that people have aspirations which come to poetic verse; what is expressed in poetry is the fact that people are constructed to have all manner of imaginations which function for their existence. The human task partly involves how to weave the imaginations as they arise out of the great imagination maker, Language itself.
Aphorism of the Day, December 4, 2018
The long history of religious faith in societies at different times means that institutions grow and accrue lots of extraneous practices and pieties which subtly become elevated in importance even to the point of covering up what is central to faith. Reformers like to return to the quickest route, "as the crow" flies. John the Baptist was regarded to be such a reformer; no more long journey on a curvy path with detours, no more high mountains or low valleys to impede the direct arrival. If John the Baptist were a piece of machinery, according to the Isaiah passage, he would be a "bulldozer." He was to make the path straight and direct.
Aphorism of the Day, December 3, 2018
How does the Gospel of Luke describe the ascendance of John the Baptist in becoming a "bridge" person to Jesus of Nazareth? Luke wrote, "the word of God came to John." The word was "like" the words of the prophets but it was unique in its "liturgical" innovation. John made everyone including the Jews go through what had heretofore been required of proselytes to Judaism; he made everyone undergo "mikvah" or baptism in the living waters of the Jordan. To treat his fellow Jews as proselytes to Judaism was a prologue to the redefinition of the church being the new Israel. John could be seen as a "bridge" to Jesus, but he also could be understood as one who began to initiate the re-interpretation of the themes of Hebrew Scriptures in a way that eventually could no longer be called Judaism in Gentile Christianity.
Aphorism of the Day, December 2, 2018
Jesus said that the trees on the leaves change and they mark a seasonal change and we can read these natural signs. He also invited us to learn how to read more complicated signs found in human life cycles both personally and as communities of people. The oft fickleness of human behaviors, though repetitive in nature, are not also so easy to read and predict as are the cycles of nature. A goal of living is to attain the gradual actuarial wisdom from our observation of probable outcomes so that we can wisely ponder how to respond to the next transitions which await us in our lives.
Aphorism of the Day, December 1, 2018
The cultural effect of deconstructive postmodernism is to live on the surface of everything. Why? In the postmodern world, there is no "inner world of ideals," and no "deep structures" because the access to the "inner world" can only be achieved by generating more "surface" signifiers about the "previously known signified" within the classic and modern systems of processing reality. The solution may be to re-hierarchize the importance of the language signifiers regarding interiority. With language we can elevate the importance of the language of the value of interiority (since language is essentially INTERIORITY), particularly as signifiers represent human solidarities which speak on behalf of what love and justice can mean for everyone.
