Aphorism of the Day, November 30, 2021
In the Lucan communities, the parables about the special birth of John the Baptist were important. And this probably is based upon a specific appeal for members of John's community to make the transition to become members of the Jesus Movement. So, John the Baptist is presented as one who was a crucial link in the succession of the Gospel, a threshold person between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant of the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, November 29, 2021
Personal identification is metaphorical without being actual. John the Baptist was seen to be the one who prepared way as found in the writings of Isaiah. He was identified as a return of Elijah by Jesus. We define current greatest with the greatness in our past in other to relate significance. The Jesus Movement writers and preachers believed that John the Baptist had an important succession role in how the Gospel of Christ came about.
Aphorism of the Day, November 28, 2021
There is something unreal about the Garden of Eden and an Advent of Christ because such U-topias (no such places) imply the loss of the possibility and the field of probabilities of what happens in freedom and time. True freedom is the basis of non-robotic, non-innocent moral maturity. In our lives we hold together the state of innocence when naivete makes one unaware of good and evil, and the mature state of holiness, when genuine moral choices for goodness and justice have become the character and practice of one's life. Between innocence and holiness or accepting complete failure at holiness is where we find ourselves. Rather than wish away the human condition, let us exercise our moral muscles in a path toward the characteristics of holiness during this Advent season.
Aphorism of the Day, November 27, 2021
The last are always the first, first in having the latest say on how to interpret the past. In time, it is wiser to say the "latest" rather than the last, because in humility one should acknowledge that there will always be people "later" than ourselves. And they will have the power to remake the story of us in ways which would not be possible without future outcomes to "rewrite" our significance.
Aphorism of the Day, November 26, 2021
What happens with the proliferation of texts and the growth of world knowledge? The "classics" like the Bible suddenly are placed within a larger linguistic universe and like a sugar cube in the ocean whose sweetness get dissipated and spread thin, the word-flavoring of the classics suffer. The loss of their influence is partially due to fact that some of their expositors do not do the work of hermeneutics to translate how the universals embedded in the ancient contexts have corresponding insights today.
Aphorism of the Day, November 25, 2021
It is good to experience thanksgiving within whatever circumstance that one finds oneself; it is better to be tending with love and care and distributive power to be able to increase the reasons for those without much to be thankful. Let us honor thanksgiving by activating our distributive powers so that all might have enough.
Aphorism of the Day, November 24, 2021
On the Eve of Thanksgiving, it might be good to ponder thanksgiving in the way in which Jesus regarded the notion of neighbor in the Good Samaritan parable. To those who were worried about "which neighbors" the law required one to love, Jesus made neighbor into a "verb." The Good Samaritan was one who said, "I neighbor anyone in need." No selfish passive notion of neighbor was allowed. It is one thing to to be thankful, but the Christ-issue, is are we mobilized to create the conditions for those who need what we have to offer so that they can be thankful? Thanksgiving should not be just a sense of feeling blessed for all that we "have;" in the Christ-mode, it is working to give those who don't have a reason to be thankful.
Aphorism of the Day, November 23, 2021
Reading the Bible by some involves genre confusion. If one reads a story as an eye-witness account when it is really parable, then there is genre confusion. Persons who try to make the words of biblical cosmology into scientific explanation get their genres confused.
Aphorism of the Day, November 22, 2021
What post-structuralism revealed is that in time, synchronicity is an impossibility because time does not stop to reveal a stable synchronicity. In language, we use words to name and such names seem to imply a "stability" to things, yet all things are always, already changing creating difference across time and space. Stability is the illusion which language creates but language itself is unstable because by and through language, we reflect upon language itself and all of its products in trying to record what language users have come to say that they are experiencing.
Aphorism of the Day, November 21, 2021
What does one do when an ancient metaphor has lost valid currency, like the notion of a "king" in the world of democracy? With Christ as the King, one has to use analogical imagination to propose a perfect "king" with an omni-competence that no earthly king can have. Christ the King is then seen as the ultimate in human omni-competence, particular as it pertains to wielding power. The power of Christ the King is the force which is used for love and justice. This is how the very earthy notion of "kingship" is rehabilitated, even though the metaphor would still lack the notion of the omni-competent feminine.
Aphorism of the Day, November 20, 2021
We cannot avoid in theism, the notion of God as pure Freedom being the greatest juxtaposition of Power and Weakness combining in the Divine. Great divine Freedom is the power to share degrees of freedom with everyone and everything that is not the greatest and in so doing becoming "sacrificially" weak to guarantee genuine moral integrity for secondary agents, meaning that our free will really means something and contributes to total expanding outcomes. The Greek word kenosis, meaning emptying of divinity into Jesus, even the dead Jesus, is iconic of God's weakness in submitting to the relative freedom of secondary agents.
Aphorism of the Day, November 19, 2021
Freedom seems to inconsistent with the notion of perfect harmony since in the conditions of freedom and in time there will always be competing egos and systems. It might have to be concluded that there is Great Freedom for everything that can and does happen and lesser freedom required for moral significant among the hierarchy of secondary agents who/which only have the freedom relevant to their capacity.
Aphorism of the Day, November 18, 2021
Christ as King who has power is seen mainly in the power of restraint and not selectively intervene within an expansive realm where degrees of freedom consistent with capabilities of lesser beings is honored by the power of restraint. Why the power of restraint? To make spiritual and moral freedom real and significant for all "secondary" agents who live and move and have being within the plenitude of God. Christ as eternal Word means that Christ is always already the conditions of knowing existence for any language user. That is the strong "passive" intervention of Christ the King.
Aphorism of the Day, November 17, 2021
We proclaim Christ as King, as our hope that there is one Being who is perfect in power, meaning having absolute power does not corrupt such a being absolutely. The irony of being perfect in power means the power to restrain one's own power and not violate the freedom which is so necessary to authentic moral and spiritual integrity. We probably cannot be perfect in power in our world of freedom because we often have to use power to intervene against power used to abuse and oppress. We who are not perfect have to see sides of ourselves that we wish we didn't have to see in the situations of the seeming oxymoron of a "just war, or just defense." It may not seem fair for the divine to be seemingly aloof from negative side of probable outcomes in the free conditions which define an infinite number of beings, things, and occasions, all in infinite numbers of free causal mutual relationships.
Aphorism of the Day, November 16, 2021
The notion of a "king" /monarchies lost relevance for modern liberal governments because of the observation that "absolute power, corrupts absolutely." The succession of leadership in a monarchy has little to do with merit or appeal to the will of the populace. Modern monarchies tend to be romanticized nostalgia and used for totemic iconic identity of a people and for tourism, when they are not out and out dictatorships. In America, we romanticized monarchies to show up in the Disney kingdoms. The Messiah notions and Christ the King were also spiritual romanticism in that they never have been actual in human history. Notions of Christendom have always corrupted the messianic and attempts at theocracy end up with manifestations of corrupt power. The New Testament writers were wise to keep Jesus as an interior king whose kingdom of justice can be made the will of the earth when we act justly.
Aphorism of the Day, November 15, 2021
The only way that the metaphor of the "king" can be rehabilitated from the fact that the concentration of power in any one such person, is to be absolutely corrupt, is to envision an ideal heavenly being whose omni-competence is such that we can project on a figure to guide the ultimate direction of improvements which we want in our oft corrupt lives.
Aphorism of the Day, November 14, 2021
I would invite everyone to an enlightened apocalypticism through the understanding of "last days" really being the fact that when everyone lives, they are living in the latest time, in terms of human history. Living in the latest time, means we have the liminal position between the past and the next "latest time" in the future. It means we always live in the now as a threshold so we seek the "unveiling" of what is next. The threshold "now" or latest time, means that we review the success and failure of human community to love and care for people and environment and being the "latest" ones, we respond to help unveil the future as a better caring world. The dire warnings of the future are based upon the belief that humanity at our worst will be the stronger probability of the future. We can understand such probability of the future as useful scare method to shock us to adopt better behaviors now.
Aphorism of the Day, November 13, 2021
Apocalyptic thinking is the spiritualization of the world; it is the accepting that the knowing and experiencing the outer world is done only through having inner and spiritual word life. Jesus, was the sign of eternal Word of God life coming to us and enlightened word life is the unveiling of the always already returning Christ. Do not limit apocalyptic imagery to one time events in a supposed future; the imagery is valid to all dire situation when the ending of what is unworthy is called for.
Aphorism of the Day, November of 12, 2021
Apocalyptic words and sayings are visualizations about having a greater advocate and savior when there is no visible signs of favorable conditions.
Aphorism of the Day, November 11, 2021
Rather than turn the Apocalyptic words of the Bible into words that predict future specific events, let them be understood as imagery of the "unveiling" that is always happening in time as the new happens as the after, makes everything else, "Before." And from what has happened before, extrapolative repetitions can anticipate the recurrence of universal human habits and happenings of weal and woe. Don't hold the apocalyptic words as some "insider" with conspiracy theories about who and when things happens. Understand the images as providing insights for us to live better.
Aphorism of the Day, November 10, 2021
A way to appropriate the biblical apocalyptic is not to view it as an "ending of time," or the end of all language users who experience the binary of before and after, the "clock" of time, rather to see the apocalyptic as the always already threshold between the binary of before and after which bespeaks continuous "ending" of life as we know it and to take life as we will know it in perpetual aftermaths. There are "big endings" because of catastrophic happenings, like the destruction of the Temple or Twin Towers, and these big endings change the social psyche in such profound ways that they don't permit life to be same as they were before the "big" event. The apocalyptic of the Bible is an invitation to "unveil" what will become after the "big" events in adjusting to know a "higher/later" experience of time that through faith becomes to be called Providence.
Aphorism of the Day, November 9, 2021
Life is negotiating between "concentric" homes. We live in the home or realm of God, overwhelmed by what we don't know or see in terms of the infinity of causal relationships in a free system. Within the home of God, our having language colonizes lesser realms to name them and we are born into traditions of all our lesser homes or realms. God who is in all in a general sense is both home and personally indwelling in all, but that's too general and mysterious. God came to be understood as having a home, a dwelling place in a made-of-wood-and-stone Temple. This designated sacred dwelling place and home of God with the people of Israel was certainly a limitation of divine presence for sake of human senses. The destruction of God's home, meant the revitalization of God's omnipresence becoming known linguistically particular within the life of all who want to know themselves as indwelt by a God who is a "homing" God. Wherever there is a language user, God as eternal Word is always already present. What about the non-language using trees and animals? They inhabit the linguistic universe of language users in passive but significantly delightful and entertaining ways so that anything that can come to language is imbued with the personality of the eternal Word, God.
Aphorism of the Day, November 8, 2021
When do we realize that we have an "edifice complex?" When an important building to us is threatened, destroyed, or when we are very proud of a place which expresses something crucial to our identity. The very notion of "home" is about identity. When the Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, this building in the iconic city of identity for people, forced people to believe in a very "portable" God who could make a home within each person.
Aphorism of the Day, November 7, 2021
It might be said that the New Testament was not meant for the ordering of society since it was written for an underground persecuted minority who believed that the world was to end soon and so there was no need to build a social order; only maintain in "cell" churches.
Aphorism of the Day, November 6, 2021
How do God's people believe in God after the homeland is overrun by Roman armies and the most intense dwelling place of God, the holiest of holies is destroyed? One begins to believe and practice belief in a different way, like not limiting intense divine presence to any place but understanding that Holy Spirit omnipresence can make God's presence become known as intense everywhere.
Aphorism of the Day, November 5, 2021
The New Testament can be seen in part as "crisis literature" and people like us who are not in crisis due to having safety in our societies to worship as we like, cannot properly appreciate the crisis literature. Crisis literature includes removing oneself from the physical world of reality with its harshness and losses like homeland, Jerusalem, and the Temple and re-constituting the same as spiritual realities in parallel heavenly topography. Persons today who want to over-identify the Messianic with modern day people and movements see themselves in conquering roles, and we have an entire history of "subjugation" of people in the name of "Christian" countries that represents a departure from the crisis literature of the values of the beatitudes being the spiritual martial arts of oppressed people.
Aphorism of the Day, November 4, 2021
Much of the New Testament is about appropriating the places and themes from Hebrew Scriptures and spiritualizing them in the Jesus Movement. 12 patriarchs of the tribes of Israel become the 12 apostles. Jesus Movement became the New Israel (how thrilled could those who continued in Judaism be about this?). Jerusalem and the Temple became heavenly locations. The actual priesthood was subsumed under Jesus the great heavenly High Priest serving at the heavenly altar. A persecuted movement of people found consolation in making the movement an interior spiritual conversion with external circumstances of trying to fly under the radar of Roman authority detection. Now ponder how the Christian Movement became over-identified with Empires, which in turn became subjugators of people around the world.
Aphorism of the Day, November 3, 2021
For empires to become empires, for ruling people to be ruling peoples, they have done some incredible cruelties in becoming rulers. How does one live with the benefit of the aftermath of sustained cruelty to subjugated peoples as one who professes the love of Christ as one's chief value? Perhaps the greatest dilemma facing the church is converting governments to the values of the beatitudes. And it is perhaps impossible. Ruling class revert to "manifest destiny" theology rather than beatitude theology to justify religious association with ruling class.
Aphorism of the Day, November 2, 2021
Interesting to note how Empire and colonial Christianity came to use the pejorative for how indigenous peoples acknowledged their connection with people of their past. These so called "pagans" were ancestor worshippers. Whereas Christians had resurrection living ancestors with the heroic being called Saints and the local ancestors being "mere souls." Not surprisingly, Christian evangelism used the universal regard of ones forebears by strategically placing the Christian "versions" of the same on calendar dates to woo indigenous peoples to adopt the Christian "resurrection version of ancestor veneration." Can we all just admit we came from people from our past, some who were known to be outstanding and well known, while others were just regular moms and dads and grandparents and friends but beloved?
Aphorism of the Day, November 1, 2021
Long before all of the sports halls of fame there arose the corporate remembrance of those who emulated the virtues of Jesus best. All Saints' Day is still the best human hall of fame since it celebrates the lived virtues of love and justice instantiated in the lives of people like us.
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