Aphorism of the Day, August 31, 2019
Hospitality writ large means the call to practice distributive justice which means enough for all. Enough for all would be the true meaning of a "free market." The "geniuses" of capitalism should add the creative notion of enough for all to their agenda.
Aphorism of the Day, August 30, 2019
What the early followers of Jesus discovered was that the ritual purity laws of Judaism prevented them from offering the kind of hospitality needed to validate the reception of the Holy Spirit by the Gentiles. Inward verification of God's touch on one's life replaced the external and cultural verification of one's "chosenness by God." Eucharist as hospitality had to be an "open communion" and not like a "closed Passover" meal.
Aphorism of the Day, August 29, 2019
Hospitality can be an embracing metaphor for social well-being, of each person living in reciprocity for each other's well-being within the community. Hospitality requires the discernment by each member to understand whether one is an active giver of hospitality or a receiver of hospitality depending upon the need of each situation. Welfare laws are needed because greedy people do not embrace the obviousness of hospitality for the common good.
Aphorism of the Day, August 28, 2019
If Eucharist is the central gathering of the church, hospitality of God to us and we with each other is a chief Christian value. Ponder the kinds of hospitality; among equals for reciprocity, to strangers and needy for exigent need, and the regular hospitality of checking egos at the door to be able to live together well. If one has only schmoozing hospitality so that one can practice social rising, then hospitality can become selfish which contradicts the sacrificial giving involved with living towards a distributive common good.
Aphorism of the Day, August 27, 2019
A new kind of hospitality characterized the churches that arose in the cities of the Roman Empire. Urbanization because of the relocation of people for economic and social reasons, meant that the "stranger" in a new place needed a welcoming community to help give orientation and "fellowship" to socially succeed. The churches were successful because they embraced a new inclusive fellowship of Jews and every sort of Gentile person, including persons of differing socio-economic strata (see Philemon and Onesimus). A non-segregating hospitality with a centering on the inclusive Eucharist was the genius of the growth of the Jesus Movement and the oracle of the Risen Christ in the Gospel communities connected the ruling value of hospitality with the historical Jesus. The Aramaic speaking Jesus was translated into the Risen Christ speaking about hospitality in the lingua franca of the church, the koine Greek.
Aphorism of the Day, August 26, 2019
Hospitality may a crucial biblical metaphor to illustrate relationship with God and with each other. The recommended hospitality of Jesus refers to the kind of engagement which results in distributing well-being to the people who need what is basic to one's well-being. Jesus eschews the type of schmoozing hospitality as one behaves towards promoting one's position of power and influence in a situation.
Aphorism of the Day, August 25, 2019
When the critics of Jesus accused him of breaking religious rules of "working" on the Sabbath for healing, they instantiated a common problem in religious behavior: separating orthopraxy from orthodoxy. The faith practice of the love of one's neighbor at all times has to be regarded as valid oblationary prayer otherwise one's ritual behaviors are disconnected from all of the other actions of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, August 24, 2019
Religion that has gone awry is when one's "orthodoxy" does not include "orthopraxy" in matters of kindness, social justice and the active love of one's neighbor as oneself. The observance of the "proper and prescribed rituals" of one faith should not be incompatible with observing the kindness of healing a person even on the Sabbath. Healing is oblationary prayer and should be valid and recommended at anytime.
Aphorism of the Day, August 23, 2019
What about healing on the Sabbath? Healing and acts of justice are the prayers of oblation and even though they might involve some "work," the intention of oblation or the offering of acts of justice, healing and love should could count as good Sabbath prayers. Augustine said to "sing is to pray twice." I would say, "to heal is to pray thrice," but then who is counting?
Aphorism of the Day, August 22, 2019
Seems rather trivial that Jesus is associated with comments about where one chooses to sit at a party. It could be that our values are immanently lived out in the quotidian practices of our lives. If we are selfish in small things, it probably means we are really selfish toward God and live as those who think that we are automatically entitled people, rather than as humble people who are grateful for the grace of what God entitles us to share with everyone in the ways that we can to show the true largesse of God.
Aphorism of the Day, August 21, 2019
Jesus contrasted hospitality behaviors. Hospitality can be tit-for-tat reciprocity among social status equals to better each others position in society or it can be the people with money, education and power offering hospitality to those with much less money, education and power. Which do you think Jesus recommended as the communal practice for "Gospel communities?"
Aphorism of the Day, August 20, 2019
About Jesus in the Gospel, it was said that "he was being watched closely." We have enter the age of surveilled lives. By choice or not we can find ourselves watched. Jesus was one being watched by those who were looking for a reason to discredit him if he were to make a great public faux pas that could be seized on to cause others to think less of him. Jesus embraced the scrutiny, not by hyper-correcting his behavior to "look religiously correct;" rather he had core principles of love and justice that he lived and spoke whether he was being watched or not. If we commit our lives to love and justice, then we should not worry about being "watched."
Aphorism of the Day, August 19, 2019
"Our God is a consuming fire." One must read the Bible like poetry gleaning flickering insights of aesthetic import in their appeals to how we have come to define and further code our emotions through successive repetition within our cultural settings. What could God as a consuming fire mean? It would not be an appealing image for those who have actually been in wildfires gone wild and out of control and who have suffered the loss of property and even life. The image of God as an enormous fire sucking up all of the oxygen that could be shared for the life of others is also frightening. God as the consuming reality of Freedom always already everywhere would hint at us being totally contained by a Dynamism which is beyond good and evil and thus can consume everything because it is in everything. From the perspective of human experience one could say that Word is that which is in and consumes everything because without Word, nothing is known. Word could be the consuming fire of human life.
Aphorism of the Day, August 18, 2019
Faith involves living under the conditions of time, change and freedom. Change experienced as non-eventful can seem to be peaceful. Changed experienced as event of discontinuity with what went before can seem to be violent and unpeaceful change. Faith is wise orientation to the reality of time, change and freedom without becoming cynical by over-identifying life with what can go wrong, but rather focusing upon the future reconciliation of what comes after fulfilling or making complete, what has come before.
Aphorism of the Day, August 17, 2019
We can be quite naive about time and change and transitions and creative advance. We would like growth to be smooth and peaceful but we often regard peace as hanging onto familiar repetitions which seem to have been “working” for us. To be challenged about our familiar repetitions can be upsetting and conflict can arise. The words of Jesus as an oracle in the early church was meant to inform the people about how time and change sometimes requires conflict and those conflicts are the growing pains of creative advance for your who embrace new insights and threaten those who hold onto the repetitions that may seem to be adequate to one’s life. The uneven adequacy of insights to different people create the conditions of conflict and the loss of peace. How can one integrate “peace” with the dynamics of significant change?
Aphorism of the Day, August 16, 2019
“I did not come to bring peace on earth...” Jesus did not bring the peace of something like music being only a composition of “rests” without any notes to disturb the “silence.” Music is made up of rests and musical notes with each beat having an oppositional relationship with every other note and rest. Time and change means there is no such thing as a static “peace.” Life is dynamic change and if one does not interpret this as the reality of creative freedom, one does not know how to interpret the present time.
Aphorism of the Day, August 15, 2019
“You do not know how to interpret the present time.” These words of Jesus are given in the context of the predication of great family disagreement regarding the changing of the religious paradigm. Christo-centric Judaism of the nascent Jesus Movement with the acceptance of Gentiles as having valid faith without being fully ritually observant to the customs of Judaism was to usher a paradigm shift bringing conflict between people living in different paradigms and having different “interpretations.”
Aphorism of the Day, August 14, 2019
“You do not know how to interpret the present time.” This is always the dilemma in life. We interpret mostly by the inherited repetitions of how we have lived and acted before. Interpreting the meaning of events toward personal action does not guarantee the success of such action. Interpretation should be based upon wise actuarial probability of what “might” occur. The words of Jesus indicate that he found many religious leaders out of touch with the obvious conditions of his time.
Aphorism of the Day, August 13, 2019
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," so goes the saying and yet he is quoted as saying, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword." The oracle words of Jesus delivered through church leaders speaking "in the name of Jesus," were realistic about the division caused by following Christ or remaining within the synagogue. "A father will be against his own son and the son against the father," describes the conditions which prevailed in the birth of the Jesus Movement on its way to becoming the church.
Aphorism of the Day, August 12, 2019
"You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" Not knowing how to interpret the present time is the perpetual dilemma in life. We are lodged in such preconceived notions that we cannot always see the significance of what is new. The words of Jesus indicate that we know how to read natural signs, like clouds and rain, or smoke and fire; he said we should have some similar common sense wisdom about what is impending, especially regarding the things which pertain to the common probability of human behavior. For example, if we have a leader who cannot help but lie with great frequency, we can interpret that our nation is in great trouble.
Aphorism of the Day, August 11, 2019
Portions of the oracles of Jesus are "apocalyptic" in Luke's Gospel. If times are threatening, be prepared for the end of everything. Apocalyptic "martial arts" living is a mode of lifestyle for dealing with dire circumstances. If you sell all and become poor, it becomes true that "you can't lose what you never had." Such was the way to prepare for what was regarded as a "potential" end. Everyone has death as the potential end of everything; everyone has a personal apocalypse to anticipate with uncertainty about when it will actually happen. When personal apocalypses are shared by communities of people who are threatened, then such threat of "corporate" death instigates and inspires reflection about life beyond life for the threatened community toward an eventual justice. Don't knock the apocalyptic impulse of biblical people; it is perhaps alive and more active in our world today which has the knowledge of eco-disaster and the actual ability of humanity to destroy our world through it own behaviors. The incredible amount of popular culture's fascination with science fiction's futurism and the apocalyptic interventionism of all of the so called "action adventures" movies and games is indicative of popular apocalypticism. We need not absolutize any particular apocalyptic outcome while we can acknowledge the truth of this discursive possibility of everyone who has to develop a discourse about one's eventual death.
Aphorism of the Day, August 10, 2019
Faith is the way to cure nostalgia, the perpetual wish for the "good ol' days," since faith is the attitude of orientation toward the future articulated in a vision of Hope. Acting in faith involves the integration of the actuarial statistics of the good, bad and the indifferent of what has happened in the past, and using this actuarial wisdom to act toward the future. Faith involves not knowing the future as actual and so it involves degrees of "creative" risk which is needed in significant creative advance in one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, August 9, 2019
"By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.." John's Gospel does not just say, "word of God," but Word is God. Our human world is "prepared and organized and accessed" because we have Word as God as Word...as God...as Word....as everything else.
Aphorism of the Day, August 8, 2019,
"By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible." Faith need not be incompatible with the empirical. No one has the empirical capacity to register all causal connections of everything, everywhere past and present. Lots remains tentative because we simply don't know. The scientific method invites us to observe the behavior of events in nature just in terms of what we know and in light of our methods and apparatus available to us. Science allows us to challenge the tentative with explanations which have long term and consistent power of congruence. Even so we are always opened to what he cannot possibly know and the steps of continuity to get there. Biblical people did not write about or know about Cadillacs or even have hopeful faith about their eventual invention. What is invisible requires a high degree of faith.
Aphorism of the Day, August 7, 2019
Hope can be "mere" dreaming if it is not complemented by faith. We need to be inspired by positive surpassing of ourselves in a future state, but we also have to have that motivating desire to act toward the same. Faith is living creatively toward what is not yet in possible goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, August 6, 2019
I am surprised that few scholars note the connection between the classical use of "pistos" in rhetoric and its undergirding relationship to "pistos" in the New Testament, meaning faith or belief. Faith or belief instantiate that which one is persuaded about such that one acts on such persuasion. "Pistos" in Aristotle is "persuasion" or the chief goal of rhetoric. One may diminish rhetoric as mere "words," even while confronting the fact that Word is God, or the source of all words. By having words, we are persuaded about our existence and the existence of all things. One should not diminish the omni-rhetoricity of all human existence.
Aphorism of the Day, August 5, 2019
Faith is the expression of what one is privileging in one's life. The classical Greek usage of the New Testament word for faith or belief is "pistos." In classical rhetoric (see Aristotle) "pistos" or persuasion was the goal of rhetoric. Faith is that which one has become persuaded about. Such persuasion is manifest in one's life force or how the energy of desire propels one into the future, into one's hope or that which is not yet. One lives by faith, whether one knows it or admits it. Why? One's live is always an expression of one's privileged values, i.e., that which one is persuaded by. Repentance, the fancy term for Christian Education, is learning to grow from faith to faith. Faith is the expression of learning continuously how the purpose of one's life is being persuaded by better and wiser outcomes. Faith is never ended because it is anchored on the "not yet" of Hope.
Aphorism of the Day, August 4, 2019
St. Paul wrote, "if you have been raised with Christ..." The Pauline writing indicate that we are "seated with Christ in heavenly places." Paul's mysticism indicates living in and from an inner realm in such a way to manifest the different values of Christ when our lives also are firming on the the "terra firma" and our bodies know the full gravity of the attending mortality.
Aphorism of the Day, August 3, 2019
Jesus expressed concerned about people who were not trying to be rich toward God. Prosperity Gospel preachers preach that wealth is a sign of God's blessing, if they are following God in the right way. One might note that humanity is "poor" toward God if the majority of humanity is poor toward each other, with one per cent of the people of the world owning the majority of the world wealth. If people are laying up "treasure in the heaven," at the very least everyone in the world has enough.
Aphorism of the Day, August 2, 2019
Jesus told a parable about a man who believed, "I have, therefore I am." Or, "I am "somebody" because of what and how much I have." The man died and suddenly did not "have" a life. None can fully control the "having of one's existence." Is existence a "property" to be had? Having divine treasure pertains to the fruits of the Spirit, which can be the eternal legacy of one's life because each deed done in love begins an endless chain of like actions and though mostly unseen, the collateral effect of the deeds of the fruit of the Spirit are the endless treasures of heaven.
Aphorism of the Day, August 1, 2019
According to preacher/teacher of Ecclesiastes, it is an unhappy task given by God to seek out wisdom. The writer is suggesting that wisdom may give rise to pessimism about the human condition. Wisdom might be the experience of being raised above the unreflected life of being a naive and automatic parrot in living of one's immediate language traditions within the human solidarity in which one lives. Naivete might be the state of optimism without any reason for it. How can one be wise and hopeful at the same time? I'm not sure that the writer of Ecclesiastes was able to attain hopefulness in wisdom. The writer's hopefulness might be called resignation; "The best that we can do is to fear God and keep the law." Perhaps the wisdom might be coming to state of learning that being good is its own reward both now and for any future life.
Hospitality writ large means the call to practice distributive justice which means enough for all. Enough for all would be the true meaning of a "free market." The "geniuses" of capitalism should add the creative notion of enough for all to their agenda.
Aphorism of the Day, August 30, 2019
What the early followers of Jesus discovered was that the ritual purity laws of Judaism prevented them from offering the kind of hospitality needed to validate the reception of the Holy Spirit by the Gentiles. Inward verification of God's touch on one's life replaced the external and cultural verification of one's "chosenness by God." Eucharist as hospitality had to be an "open communion" and not like a "closed Passover" meal.
Aphorism of the Day, August 29, 2019
Hospitality can be an embracing metaphor for social well-being, of each person living in reciprocity for each other's well-being within the community. Hospitality requires the discernment by each member to understand whether one is an active giver of hospitality or a receiver of hospitality depending upon the need of each situation. Welfare laws are needed because greedy people do not embrace the obviousness of hospitality for the common good.
Aphorism of the Day, August 28, 2019
If Eucharist is the central gathering of the church, hospitality of God to us and we with each other is a chief Christian value. Ponder the kinds of hospitality; among equals for reciprocity, to strangers and needy for exigent need, and the regular hospitality of checking egos at the door to be able to live together well. If one has only schmoozing hospitality so that one can practice social rising, then hospitality can become selfish which contradicts the sacrificial giving involved with living towards a distributive common good.
Aphorism of the Day, August 27, 2019
A new kind of hospitality characterized the churches that arose in the cities of the Roman Empire. Urbanization because of the relocation of people for economic and social reasons, meant that the "stranger" in a new place needed a welcoming community to help give orientation and "fellowship" to socially succeed. The churches were successful because they embraced a new inclusive fellowship of Jews and every sort of Gentile person, including persons of differing socio-economic strata (see Philemon and Onesimus). A non-segregating hospitality with a centering on the inclusive Eucharist was the genius of the growth of the Jesus Movement and the oracle of the Risen Christ in the Gospel communities connected the ruling value of hospitality with the historical Jesus. The Aramaic speaking Jesus was translated into the Risen Christ speaking about hospitality in the lingua franca of the church, the koine Greek.
Aphorism of the Day, August 26, 2019
Hospitality may a crucial biblical metaphor to illustrate relationship with God and with each other. The recommended hospitality of Jesus refers to the kind of engagement which results in distributing well-being to the people who need what is basic to one's well-being. Jesus eschews the type of schmoozing hospitality as one behaves towards promoting one's position of power and influence in a situation.
Aphorism of the Day, August 25, 2019
When the critics of Jesus accused him of breaking religious rules of "working" on the Sabbath for healing, they instantiated a common problem in religious behavior: separating orthopraxy from orthodoxy. The faith practice of the love of one's neighbor at all times has to be regarded as valid oblationary prayer otherwise one's ritual behaviors are disconnected from all of the other actions of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, August 24, 2019
Religion that has gone awry is when one's "orthodoxy" does not include "orthopraxy" in matters of kindness, social justice and the active love of one's neighbor as oneself. The observance of the "proper and prescribed rituals" of one faith should not be incompatible with observing the kindness of healing a person even on the Sabbath. Healing is oblationary prayer and should be valid and recommended at anytime.
Aphorism of the Day, August 23, 2019
What about healing on the Sabbath? Healing and acts of justice are the prayers of oblation and even though they might involve some "work," the intention of oblation or the offering of acts of justice, healing and love should could count as good Sabbath prayers. Augustine said to "sing is to pray twice." I would say, "to heal is to pray thrice," but then who is counting?
Aphorism of the Day, August 22, 2019
Seems rather trivial that Jesus is associated with comments about where one chooses to sit at a party. It could be that our values are immanently lived out in the quotidian practices of our lives. If we are selfish in small things, it probably means we are really selfish toward God and live as those who think that we are automatically entitled people, rather than as humble people who are grateful for the grace of what God entitles us to share with everyone in the ways that we can to show the true largesse of God.
Aphorism of the Day, August 21, 2019
Jesus contrasted hospitality behaviors. Hospitality can be tit-for-tat reciprocity among social status equals to better each others position in society or it can be the people with money, education and power offering hospitality to those with much less money, education and power. Which do you think Jesus recommended as the communal practice for "Gospel communities?"
Aphorism of the Day, August 20, 2019
About Jesus in the Gospel, it was said that "he was being watched closely." We have enter the age of surveilled lives. By choice or not we can find ourselves watched. Jesus was one being watched by those who were looking for a reason to discredit him if he were to make a great public faux pas that could be seized on to cause others to think less of him. Jesus embraced the scrutiny, not by hyper-correcting his behavior to "look religiously correct;" rather he had core principles of love and justice that he lived and spoke whether he was being watched or not. If we commit our lives to love and justice, then we should not worry about being "watched."
Aphorism of the Day, August 19, 2019
"Our God is a consuming fire." One must read the Bible like poetry gleaning flickering insights of aesthetic import in their appeals to how we have come to define and further code our emotions through successive repetition within our cultural settings. What could God as a consuming fire mean? It would not be an appealing image for those who have actually been in wildfires gone wild and out of control and who have suffered the loss of property and even life. The image of God as an enormous fire sucking up all of the oxygen that could be shared for the life of others is also frightening. God as the consuming reality of Freedom always already everywhere would hint at us being totally contained by a Dynamism which is beyond good and evil and thus can consume everything because it is in everything. From the perspective of human experience one could say that Word is that which is in and consumes everything because without Word, nothing is known. Word could be the consuming fire of human life.
Aphorism of the Day, August 18, 2019
Faith involves living under the conditions of time, change and freedom. Change experienced as non-eventful can seem to be peaceful. Changed experienced as event of discontinuity with what went before can seem to be violent and unpeaceful change. Faith is wise orientation to the reality of time, change and freedom without becoming cynical by over-identifying life with what can go wrong, but rather focusing upon the future reconciliation of what comes after fulfilling or making complete, what has come before.
Aphorism of the Day, August 17, 2019
We can be quite naive about time and change and transitions and creative advance. We would like growth to be smooth and peaceful but we often regard peace as hanging onto familiar repetitions which seem to have been “working” for us. To be challenged about our familiar repetitions can be upsetting and conflict can arise. The words of Jesus as an oracle in the early church was meant to inform the people about how time and change sometimes requires conflict and those conflicts are the growing pains of creative advance for your who embrace new insights and threaten those who hold onto the repetitions that may seem to be adequate to one’s life. The uneven adequacy of insights to different people create the conditions of conflict and the loss of peace. How can one integrate “peace” with the dynamics of significant change?
Aphorism of the Day, August 16, 2019
“I did not come to bring peace on earth...” Jesus did not bring the peace of something like music being only a composition of “rests” without any notes to disturb the “silence.” Music is made up of rests and musical notes with each beat having an oppositional relationship with every other note and rest. Time and change means there is no such thing as a static “peace.” Life is dynamic change and if one does not interpret this as the reality of creative freedom, one does not know how to interpret the present time.
Aphorism of the Day, August 15, 2019
“You do not know how to interpret the present time.” These words of Jesus are given in the context of the predication of great family disagreement regarding the changing of the religious paradigm. Christo-centric Judaism of the nascent Jesus Movement with the acceptance of Gentiles as having valid faith without being fully ritually observant to the customs of Judaism was to usher a paradigm shift bringing conflict between people living in different paradigms and having different “interpretations.”
Aphorism of the Day, August 14, 2019
“You do not know how to interpret the present time.” This is always the dilemma in life. We interpret mostly by the inherited repetitions of how we have lived and acted before. Interpreting the meaning of events toward personal action does not guarantee the success of such action. Interpretation should be based upon wise actuarial probability of what “might” occur. The words of Jesus indicate that he found many religious leaders out of touch with the obvious conditions of his time.
Aphorism of the Day, August 13, 2019
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," so goes the saying and yet he is quoted as saying, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword." The oracle words of Jesus delivered through church leaders speaking "in the name of Jesus," were realistic about the division caused by following Christ or remaining within the synagogue. "A father will be against his own son and the son against the father," describes the conditions which prevailed in the birth of the Jesus Movement on its way to becoming the church.
Aphorism of the Day, August 12, 2019
"You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" Not knowing how to interpret the present time is the perpetual dilemma in life. We are lodged in such preconceived notions that we cannot always see the significance of what is new. The words of Jesus indicate that we know how to read natural signs, like clouds and rain, or smoke and fire; he said we should have some similar common sense wisdom about what is impending, especially regarding the things which pertain to the common probability of human behavior. For example, if we have a leader who cannot help but lie with great frequency, we can interpret that our nation is in great trouble.
Aphorism of the Day, August 11, 2019
Portions of the oracles of Jesus are "apocalyptic" in Luke's Gospel. If times are threatening, be prepared for the end of everything. Apocalyptic "martial arts" living is a mode of lifestyle for dealing with dire circumstances. If you sell all and become poor, it becomes true that "you can't lose what you never had." Such was the way to prepare for what was regarded as a "potential" end. Everyone has death as the potential end of everything; everyone has a personal apocalypse to anticipate with uncertainty about when it will actually happen. When personal apocalypses are shared by communities of people who are threatened, then such threat of "corporate" death instigates and inspires reflection about life beyond life for the threatened community toward an eventual justice. Don't knock the apocalyptic impulse of biblical people; it is perhaps alive and more active in our world today which has the knowledge of eco-disaster and the actual ability of humanity to destroy our world through it own behaviors. The incredible amount of popular culture's fascination with science fiction's futurism and the apocalyptic interventionism of all of the so called "action adventures" movies and games is indicative of popular apocalypticism. We need not absolutize any particular apocalyptic outcome while we can acknowledge the truth of this discursive possibility of everyone who has to develop a discourse about one's eventual death.
Aphorism of the Day, August 10, 2019
Faith is the way to cure nostalgia, the perpetual wish for the "good ol' days," since faith is the attitude of orientation toward the future articulated in a vision of Hope. Acting in faith involves the integration of the actuarial statistics of the good, bad and the indifferent of what has happened in the past, and using this actuarial wisdom to act toward the future. Faith involves not knowing the future as actual and so it involves degrees of "creative" risk which is needed in significant creative advance in one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, August 9, 2019
"By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.." John's Gospel does not just say, "word of God," but Word is God. Our human world is "prepared and organized and accessed" because we have Word as God as Word...as God...as Word....as everything else.
Aphorism of the Day, August 8, 2019,
"By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible." Faith need not be incompatible with the empirical. No one has the empirical capacity to register all causal connections of everything, everywhere past and present. Lots remains tentative because we simply don't know. The scientific method invites us to observe the behavior of events in nature just in terms of what we know and in light of our methods and apparatus available to us. Science allows us to challenge the tentative with explanations which have long term and consistent power of congruence. Even so we are always opened to what he cannot possibly know and the steps of continuity to get there. Biblical people did not write about or know about Cadillacs or even have hopeful faith about their eventual invention. What is invisible requires a high degree of faith.
Aphorism of the Day, August 7, 2019
Hope can be "mere" dreaming if it is not complemented by faith. We need to be inspired by positive surpassing of ourselves in a future state, but we also have to have that motivating desire to act toward the same. Faith is living creatively toward what is not yet in possible goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, August 6, 2019
I am surprised that few scholars note the connection between the classical use of "pistos" in rhetoric and its undergirding relationship to "pistos" in the New Testament, meaning faith or belief. Faith or belief instantiate that which one is persuaded about such that one acts on such persuasion. "Pistos" in Aristotle is "persuasion" or the chief goal of rhetoric. One may diminish rhetoric as mere "words," even while confronting the fact that Word is God, or the source of all words. By having words, we are persuaded about our existence and the existence of all things. One should not diminish the omni-rhetoricity of all human existence.
Aphorism of the Day, August 5, 2019
Faith is the expression of what one is privileging in one's life. The classical Greek usage of the New Testament word for faith or belief is "pistos." In classical rhetoric (see Aristotle) "pistos" or persuasion was the goal of rhetoric. Faith is that which one has become persuaded about. Such persuasion is manifest in one's life force or how the energy of desire propels one into the future, into one's hope or that which is not yet. One lives by faith, whether one knows it or admits it. Why? One's live is always an expression of one's privileged values, i.e., that which one is persuaded by. Repentance, the fancy term for Christian Education, is learning to grow from faith to faith. Faith is the expression of learning continuously how the purpose of one's life is being persuaded by better and wiser outcomes. Faith is never ended because it is anchored on the "not yet" of Hope.
Aphorism of the Day, August 4, 2019
St. Paul wrote, "if you have been raised with Christ..." The Pauline writing indicate that we are "seated with Christ in heavenly places." Paul's mysticism indicates living in and from an inner realm in such a way to manifest the different values of Christ when our lives also are firming on the the "terra firma" and our bodies know the full gravity of the attending mortality.
Aphorism of the Day, August 3, 2019
Jesus expressed concerned about people who were not trying to be rich toward God. Prosperity Gospel preachers preach that wealth is a sign of God's blessing, if they are following God in the right way. One might note that humanity is "poor" toward God if the majority of humanity is poor toward each other, with one per cent of the people of the world owning the majority of the world wealth. If people are laying up "treasure in the heaven," at the very least everyone in the world has enough.
Aphorism of the Day, August 2, 2019
Jesus told a parable about a man who believed, "I have, therefore I am." Or, "I am "somebody" because of what and how much I have." The man died and suddenly did not "have" a life. None can fully control the "having of one's existence." Is existence a "property" to be had? Having divine treasure pertains to the fruits of the Spirit, which can be the eternal legacy of one's life because each deed done in love begins an endless chain of like actions and though mostly unseen, the collateral effect of the deeds of the fruit of the Spirit are the endless treasures of heaven.
Aphorism of the Day, August 1, 2019
According to preacher/teacher of Ecclesiastes, it is an unhappy task given by God to seek out wisdom. The writer is suggesting that wisdom may give rise to pessimism about the human condition. Wisdom might be the experience of being raised above the unreflected life of being a naive and automatic parrot in living of one's immediate language traditions within the human solidarity in which one lives. Naivete might be the state of optimism without any reason for it. How can one be wise and hopeful at the same time? I'm not sure that the writer of Ecclesiastes was able to attain hopefulness in wisdom. The writer's hopefulness might be called resignation; "The best that we can do is to fear God and keep the law." Perhaps the wisdom might be coming to state of learning that being good is its own reward both now and for any future life.
