Aphorism of the Day, June 2020

Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2020

In the contrast between ministerial styles of John the Baptist and Jesus, public opinion criticized both.  John was an ascetic and was said to have a demon.  Jesus was a social mixer and so he was said to be a glutton and a drunkard and obviously a sinner for not adhering to the rigid separation rules of the purity code.  The critics were the wise and the intelligent of his time.  So, Jesus accessed in people the memorial place of one's birth, the place where one is not so coded with the cynicism of the adult world, and the place of original joy that can be recovered from forgetfulness.

Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2020

It is a good week to couple the quote from the poem on the Statue of Liberty with the words of Jesus.  "Come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest."  "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free...."  Yes, America has had and can have Christ-like values to live up to.

Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2020

The presentation of the Good News should be perceived like giving out cold water in a arid place to thirsty people.  Market assessment: Lots of thirsty people in an arid place.  Provide cold water.

Response guaranteed.

Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2020

The failure of the church to integrate correspondence in the universal patterns of language found within the Scriptures with the same patterns today means that ancient cultural practices have been wrongly forced upon modern persons and the younger people aren't buying it.  Younger people find their universal patterns of language in the many discursive products which have developed out of the "one book."  If the great forerunner piece of literature is to retain status as a revered ancient of days, the users of the Bible who still find in it a wisdom path of transformation are going to have to do a better job of interweaving the universal telling biblical language patterns with the patterns of people's everyday lives.

  Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2020

The message of Jesus should be the domino effect of "welcome."  "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me" and if each person sent by the motivating love of Christ takes the attitude of welcome as their identity, then there can be not room for racism, bias or prejudice.  The question that people who claim an identity with Christ need to ask themselves if they are properly and honestly representing the welcome and the hospitality of Christ.  The Eucharist instantiates the welcoming hospitality of God in Christ and we should not misrepresent a welcoming God.

Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2020

One can find in the Epistle to the Romans perhaps most of the foundations of the twelve step program.  St. Paul write the anatomy of the loss of agency through the repeated addictive habits of sin and the restoration of agency with an event of grace by a higher power.  The event of grace is an event of restoration in having the power of agency to begin to make different choices and to built habits of better choices.  Paul's tool box metaphor is meant to give insights into the problem.  The human person is a composite of instruments whose use must be carried out by a craftsperson with enlightened building plans.  One's instruments can be used for self and social destructive means or they can be used for holy creative means.  If the personal agent has got locked into habits of the misuse of his or her instruments the habit becomes like a demonic controlling impulse.  (one of the Greek meanings of daimon was "controlling impulse).  The negative results are so personally felt, it can seem as though a giant person has usurped control in one's life.   This is where Paul used the slave metaphor; one was under the seeming involuntary control of this habit master.  The Grace Event with a Higher Authority is the needed interdiction and intervention to gain the freedom to attain the agency to begin to make choices, one by one and built new habits of benign and beneficial results.  We can be lost in bad habits and not even know it, particular if they don't seem to be "socially unacceptable" behaviors, like the addiction of greed.  Our society actually valorizes people who are really successful at the addiction of greed.

Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2020

While St. Paul uses slavery as a spiritual metaphor in seemingly binary terms of either being a slave to sin or a slave to God, it might seem like he is denying a spiritual transformational process.  The binary indicates directions on a continuum toward perfectability, which no one reaches as if complete sanctification is something that anyone could ever know, since if one knows that one is sanctified then that is immediately erased by such "prideful" knowing.  Slavery assume that one is owned by another party and one gets caught in a oxymoron in implying one freely chooses to be a "slave" of God.   It would seem that the metaphor for "slavery" has limited "metaphoricity" in its signification.  It might be better to say that one is faced with the lures of different direction, one lure is the habitual tendency ruts of one's long history of acting selfishly, and the other Lure is that of the divine invitation to self-surpassability in being able to be better today than yesterday.

Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2020

The Gospel assumes the initiation into an identity with Christ and thus the phenomenon of "alter Christus."  "Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me."  Doing, saying, and writing in the Name of Jesus was the expression of this Identity with Christ.  This means it is impossible to distinguish between  any certain historical words in of Jesus of Nazareth, who spoke Aramaic,  and the writers and preachers who preached in his name.  John is called the Divine for being, "in the Spirit," and this is another expression of the mystical Identity with Christ.

Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2020

In reading the Bible we have to deal with ancient metaphors which rang with a different kind of clarity within their contexts and the gap in correspondence with more modern sensitivities, like the the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham which became a metaphor for the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross by his Father.  The notion that God would need a death as a means of satisfying some "heavenly" sense of "eye for an eye" justice system is an indication that human society projected on God and presented God as such an "eye for an eye" Being.  One can see the liberation from such projection in the arrival at the notion of being "living sacrifices," wherein it is much more beneficial to be alive and "live for others" beyond selfishness, than to be dead, even if sometimes a situation required the laying down of life for another.

Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2020

The life and words of Jesus can be regarded as parables within parables because they are meant to give comfort, insight and explanation for the pain involved in how the paradigm was painfully changing for those who were excommunicated from the synagogue for their innovations regarding who Jesus of Nazareth was.  It became obvious that the view of Messiah as Suffering Servant or as Davidic Interventionist were incommensurable for the synagogue and the Jesus Movement to remain together.

Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2020

"Taking up one's cross," seems to be a catch phrase in the Jesus Movement.  It is ironic and indicates how such a terrible event had been tamed to become mystical practice.  In Paul, the cross is something of glory and it had the power to effect inner transformation.  We're so used to the use of the cross as a metaphor of transformation that we forget how terrible such an event of crucifixion actually was.

Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2020

The perfect peace of God arrived in Jesus as a sword to the complacency of accepting a peace for some and not for the many.  On Juneteenth, the perfect Peace of God still arrives to us as the sword of God's Word in convicting us to unsettle us when our notions of peace tolerate the active harm and discomfort of any of our brothers and sisters.

Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2020

The proto-message of Gentile Christianity found in the Gospel words of Jesus is that a "prophet is without honor in his own home."  The Gospel hard sayings of Jesus indicating that there is not peace among families because of serious disagreement reveals that the crucible for the birth of the Jesus Movement was the rejection by those who believed that the message of Jesus was not the continuing message of Judaism.  It is hard to avoid the "harshness" of the words which instantiates this response to being rejected by those who believed themselves to be the true heirs to the Mosaic tradition.  One might wish that new paradigms come to be without pain and anger and disagreement but it was not the case with the Jesus Movement.  We have painful disagreements at the heart of the founding of the Movement.  Historically, the expression of such pain expressed in the Gospel story resulted in the mistreatment of Jewish minority communities in "Christian" realms.  The passage of Time among people brings disturbed peace followed by time of settling peace due to community resolution of how to live together in difference, only to be followed by a new unsettling of the previous "peace." 

Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2020

One has to deal with the koan-like sayings of Jesus in the Gospel.  One of the purposes of the sayings may be like one of the main purposes of John's Gospel: Don't interpret things literally as those the language of the Bible were a mirror of the physical world.  "Those who find their life will lose it."  This is reference to the "soul life" (pseuche) which might involve what is called mind, emotions and volitional.  Why does Jesus not bring peace?  Living in the Time and Change and the Freedom for continual new arising means there can never be a static peace, with oneself or with one's relationship, even the oft regarded static and stable relationship of family.  The peace of Jesus is dynamic in that one has to adjust one's eyes to seeing things as one whirls on the merry-go-round of Time.

Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2020

One of the modern issue with ancient text is how the language directly or indirectly how attitudes and values have been constituted and acted out in subsequent history.  When we try to "transplant" Jesus in our time and say, "What would Jesus do?," we would conclude that Jesus would not use the word slave as a valid metaphor for the status of any human being.  And while we treat the Bible like Shakespeare in not "altering" an historic text, we have to confront what kind of inhumanity the lack of change in social relationships such biblical words were used to uphold for many, many years.  It is difficult to read these words since they reveal how "enlightened" people often could only echo the tacit social patterns of their settings.  Just like we can't ask why they didn't have Cadillacs in the time of Jesus, it is more painful to ask why did any enlightened person ever tolerate slavery?

Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2020

For literalists, the words of Jesus can be literally cruel.  "I did not come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword."  "If you want to follow me, you have to take up your cross."  "I came to set family members against each other, especially if you love them more than me."  The mystical purpose of the Gospel is to confuse the literal mind to shock one into knowing the interior zone of the parallel spiritual realm which in practical terms is how we are interiorly constituted by the words which direct what we do, say and write.  We assume that the Gospels were readily available literature to everyone like they are today, but they really were a cryptic program of mystagogy for the initiates upon a path of transformation.  One had to have "ears to hear" and "eyes to see" in order not to be completely turned off by the literal appropriation of all of the "hard sayings" of Jesus.  It is probably not good to read the Gospels unless one is will to have all of the "word furniture" of one's interior life totally rearranged, otherwise one ends up leaving the Gospel completely or presuming to defend it in ways for all the wrong reasons because after all, we live in a "Christian" world.

Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2020

"Brother will betray brother to death."  History has taught us that in religion and politics, disagreements between parties and thought paradigms can involve conflict leading to death.  The American experiment was supposed to provide a framework in law to allow for peaceful transition in government, and the freedom of worship.  Euro-centric Christians colonized and enslaved and "gave people of color the Gospel," but kept them enslaved even when they had become Christian brothers and sisters loved by Jesus.  Why would Euro-centric evangelists give the Gospel message to people whom they were going to enslave and treat as second class people?  Euro-centric Christianity faces a major crisis in America and Black Lives Matter people are simply asking, "Why can't you love us like Jesus does?"

Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2020

Persons on the mystical path as readers of the Gospels as mystagogy, should see themselves as living on the spectrum of disciple-apostle, or the learning-teaching/action modes.  We should always be students and teachers.  We learn to be sent to share and teach the highest and best practice.  The irony of the disciple-apostle dynamic is that one does not complete learning until one has taught what one has learned.  How many times do we say, "I really did not learn this until I actively had to teach it to someone else?"

Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2020

Before the evangelical mission, Jesus observed that there were many sheep without shepherds.  The crowd of vulnerable people who did not have leaders who took notice or care of them was the harvest that Jesus believed to need labors to harvest.  It is a great limitation to reduce the Gospel to getting people to agree with one's own position about God.  Good news arriving to people should first be in the form of dignity and justice rather than about people whom one can persuade about one's belief.  Too often faith as persuasion is seen as getting people to agree with one's own particular faith presentations.  A good meal, a decent living, access to life liberty and happiness in equality is perhaps the prior Gospel to precede any preaching.  Let's start with the active justice of enough to eat and equality as the prior condition to have permission to peddle our particular message.

Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2020

In one of the evangelical missions reported in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells the evangelists not to go to the Gentiles and the Samaritans, but to the lost sheep of Israel.  Why the exclusivity of the charge reported and written in a time when the church was becoming more Samaritan and Gentile in actual composition?  The writer needs to show through an oracle of the Risen Christ that the people of Israel were given "the first chance" to accept the message of Jesus. What was the punishment to be for not accepting the evangelists message?  It will be worse for the rejectors than it was for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.  It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the "love your enemy" discourse with a seeming presentation of a "limit to loving one's enemy."  The Gospel rhetoric for a seeming change of paradigms is sometimes very severe for the people who cannot/will not convert to the new paradigm.

Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2020

It is unavoidable for us to read the Gospel without noticing how the early Christian movements were forged by their perceived opponents, the Jews who remained in the synagogue.  In Hegelian terms when the antithesis phase is prominent the good news is colored with telling the bad news about one's opponent.  The non-converting Jews had their own continuing mission of Judaism in the world which more tolerant people faith have come to acknowledge as having different but equal regard.  So dealing with the opposition which is found in Christian origins can be presented as "paradigm" switch and the continuing need which all people have to have significant paradigm switches in their lives.  There is an "ugly" phase when one tends to speak ill of what one is leaving so as to praise the "surpassing adequacy" of what one is embracing.

Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2020

In reading about the evangelical missions commission by Jesus for the twelve and the seventy and the record of his interactions with a diverse group of people, we can assume the awareness of Jesus about his charismatic effect and appeal to people and how it was related to the teaching which he offered regarding their well being.  This indicates Jesus was both a "one on one" personal evangelist but also a delegator; he realized the time space limitation of being located in one body.  The early evangelical missions were perhaps the first signs of what might be called "institutionalization" of the Gospel.  Was he to be the founder of a "rabbinical" school?  It didn't seem as though he was attracting the more "scholarly" types.  But he did attract people who found they had an aptitude which their life situation did not allow them to develop before they met Jesus.  If one is trapped in a "family fishing business" with a curious mind then Jesus was the way out, an escape to personal development.  Peter in Rome could not help but think, "I'm a long way from the Sea of Galilee."

Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2020

It is too easy to use the Gospel to find "proof texts" for why one's current positions are superior to one's "theological opponents" within one's faith community or in another faith community or in no faith community at all.  What and how we selectively choose and explicate from our Holy Book is an indication more of our own projections rather than the original correct meaning of the biblical writing, which is in fact elusive.  If we choose to highlight the "fighting" among religious parties found in the Gospel, then our choice is our projection about how we need to have theological "enemies" to define ourselves today.  We know from the blood and gore of Christian history that "heretics" were burnt at the stake and much worse.  Just because America was formed based upon not allowing religious parties to have the power to burn their perceived heretics at the stake, religious parties still try to use the politics of our country to gain favor and to "harm" opponents.

Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2020

In valuation, supreme values get pushed out of anthropology into theology almost as the effort for humanity to escape itself because of being plagued with the manifestation of such low values of selfishness and the results.  Theology is utopian thinking in that hope always seems to call us to be better than we think that we can actually be.  Some of us believe it is better to build on what we call hope rather than in despair live perpetually disillusioned lives with each other.

Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2020

In some classical theology, God cannot be known as God, God can only be known through the energies which emanate from God and that energy was regarded to be One with God's Essence.  In post-modern language based thinking, a signifier always signifies something that is not itself and so it stands in for what it is not.  The signified is not known except through the use of signifiers which are constantly referring to each other in the eternal effort to represent the Signified.  The Signified is always presumed to "exist" without presuming to know the Signified as the Signified.  But the Signified assumes the entire universe of discourse past, present and future and that is something akin to the metaphor of the Word being with God and being God from the beginning.  If one thinks that the mystery of the Trinity is an intellectual "cop out," one can simply note that we resort to meaningful functional mysteries all of the time in our lives because of the endless quest to build the body of signifiers to try to do justice to the ever elusive Signified.  You might say, "but I see the signified, a tree, when I use the word "tree."  Alas, one is only seeing through the taxonomical filtering screen of signifiers in such observation.

Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2020

"Negative" Theology or apophatic theology is really a Positive or cataphatic theology since everything which comes to language is necessarily "positive."  The Trinity is what might be called a transcendental "Signified" about whom no signifier can adequately represent or be a "stand in" for.  Hence, God is not this or that to the infinity of human language, however we are saying all of this in language and so the Greatness beyond our limited capacity still comes to language and the Name Words for members of the Trinity impart the ultimate value of saying this universe is a "personal" universe even if all "personal" energies are not the same.  There are Great Persons who are personal beyond the way in which we are personal who account for all levels of personality in our world.

Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2020

A prologue to speaking about the Trinity might be to recount all of the names of God found in the Abrahamic Faiths.  What is the difference between having more than 100 names which cite personal attributes and familial relationship words for God and coming to the exclusivity of Three Equal Persons in the Godhead?  Is the Trinity a coming to the unveiling of specific divine personhood from a field of personal attributes which give the general sense of God as a Person?Or is the main reason that Christians are Trinitarian is because on accepting the validity of the presentation of God in the words of Jesus, the Trinity is simply a matter of how Jesus presented His Relationship with Father and Holy Spirit?

Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2020

Is it so surprising that we've come to seeing God as a Trinity of Persons?  We are people with language and having language is the essence of being personal because it is always, already basis of inter-communication.  So, as humanity we cannot help but personalize everything through our personal filters.  We cannot pretend we're not personal being even when we think that we are observing/interacting with extra-personal, sub-personal beings.  So what would be better and more superlative is the Super Person whom we assume is the very linguistic ground for an omni-personal universe.

Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2020

We often think that we're being really profound to say that the Trinity is a mystery and we cannot know how it can be so.  Really?  Isn't everything a profound mystery since we cannot be all-knowing, we have to be agnostic about aspects of all things because an infinite number of things are in an infinite number of relationships with an infinite number of things.  There are enough profound mysteries in our everyday lives so we should not just resort to playing the "mystery" card about the Trinity.  Rather, we should explicate how we believe the Trinitarian personal metaphors are unavoidable in how we live our lives in the life of being languaged-beings and how what we know and don't know comes to language.

Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2020

In a Pauline benediction, the association of grace with Jesus, love with God the Father, and communion with the Holy Spirit is found.  One could say that God is the unknowable "all that is, was, might have been and will be,"  but then does one choose different words for a "Trinity" of the divine?  We came to settle on Personality for God since if Someone is greater than us as human people, they also must be exalted personalities or they would not be greater than us.