Aphorism of the Day, September 2023

Aphorism of the Day, September 30, 2023

In the time of Jesus, what kind of authority did Jesus have?  Caesar had authority through his soldiers and agents, the authority of power to coerce and oppress.  The authority of Jesus was seen in his charismatic winsomeness, but winsomeness in itself can be horrendous mob authority.  The success to comprise a mob is the dark side of charismatic authority.  Winsomeness as ability to unite people is a kind of self evidential authority of a cohesive group.  It can be a dark and violent authority.  The Christ-like authority has the standard of peace, justice, love, kindness offered to all.  What is rightful authority has to be continuously judged by the standard of justice outcomes.

Aphorism of the Day, September 29, 2023

Kenosis refers to the emptying of the divine into Jesus even as he became emptied of his life in death.  The incarnation evokes the insight of the always already continuum between everything thing and every occasion which ironically expresses the fullness of the divine in everything.  God's emptied Self into omnipresence is the filling of all things with the divine presence.

Aphorism of the Day, September 28, 2023

The interrelationship of all beings and all occasions is so vast the cumulative effects on one is hard to know precisely and in the great field of probability we confess the mystery of the great Negligible.  We rightly engage in what most can be gained for effective actions through statistical approximation even while being baffled that a member of the family had a cancer that has never been in the family tree.  Probability theory still must honor the negligible.

Aphorism of the Day, September 27, 2023

The incarnation is a phase on the continuum of the General and the Particular.  Any moment on the continuum only has meaning because the entire continuum is always the dynamic between individual and the synchronic Whole in time becoming.

Aphorism of the Day, September 26, 2023

Saying what we are going to do for future good and doing what we said we would do is to bring congruence between one's words and deeds.  This agreement between speaking what is just and loving and doing what is just and loving is goal of recovering hypocrites who are committed to strive for the ideals, while bemoaning failures to do so, and maintaining the high standards of the ideals to establish the direction for moral improvement.

Aphorism of the Day, September 25, 2023

"Kenosis" or emptying was the Pauline way of saying the particular cannot be erased without erasing the whole.  There is an equality of identity between the particular and the whole because if one assumes the whole, one assume the particulars, and if one assumes the particulars, they are assumed only within and in identity with the whole.  The incarnation is the nuanced identity insight between particular manifestation of divinity and Plenitude.

Aphorism of the Day, September 24, 2023

Justice can seem unfair, even as forgiveness might seem like it is not justice. Justice is the adaptation of what is appropriate to the situation of the person.  So, not all justice looks equal.  We don't let ten year old lawfully drive on the road.

Aphorism of the Day, September 23, 2023

Knowing the realm of God in life means promoting the equal dignity of all in the middle of the messiness of differences.  It means not tolerating injustice.

 Aphorism of the Day, September 22, 2023

The latest is always the first in currency.  Since we cannot but only "be" in the "now," the now is always the latest and that makes "we in the now primary."  The question is how we use our "now" for a better future, for those who need to be "first" in dignity which they don't have now.

Aphorism of the Day, September 21, 2023

The kingdom of heaven is always already access that we have to justice known as the equality of equalizing dignity offered to persons whose resumes are not so long and whose experience and skillsets and talent and wellness status do not determine their inherent worth or lovability.

Aphorism of the Day, September 20, 2023

In interpretation, the latest has the "first" place.  The latest interpreter of all that is former has the ability to designate all that has been in order to serve what is now from one's own point of view.  The last shall be first is true, until the next "latest" arrives.  Time means that one can only be "last" for limited time because we are all succeeded.

Aphorism of the Day, September 19, 2023

The message of Paul is that Christ suffered, meaning that God suffers, and he wrote that this privilege of suffering with Christ is given to his followers.  Suffering is valorized by giving it a cosmic meaning of suffering with God on behalf of the world.  Solidarity in suffering is the identity of the oppressed who are forced to live a Christ-martial arts to survive.  The alternatives to suffering is to live ignoring the suffering of others or to be part of the group which causes suffering for others through lifestyle choices.  And most of us have intermittent loss and suffering while living the other alternatives to suffering.

Aphorism of the Day, September 18, 2023

Why is justice so difficult?  Justice is the wise negotiation within infinite differences.  When it is said that all are equal such equality cannot mean negating manifold differences among people in their DNA, their abilities, and the environments of their upbringing.  It is our perpetual spiritual art to discern what justice means in specific cases.  Laws, customs, traditions and the body of precedence helps prepare us for the new moment of discerning and applying justice in the new situation.

Aphorism of the Day, September 17, 2023

Everlastingness is the evidence of continual forgiveness.  All that is, is allowed to become again in time, but differently only bearing traces of all that was.  The crucial part for creatures with higher volition is whether we will choose to become better in response to the continual forgiveness of having been sustained.

Aphorism of the Day, September 16, 2023

The words of Jesus asks his followers to practice forgiveness in a world of oppression.  Slaves were enslaved, women were subjugated, and the Empire had the legal right of terror against any rivals.  It's as though the words of Jesus are asking church members to practice the act of reconciliation known as forgiveness in hopes for a moral osmosis into the world outside their micro-community.

Aphorism of Day, September 15, 2023

The writers of the Bible called sin or evil what we probably call acts of psychopathology or social pathology today.  The practice of forgiveness was recommended assuming that members of the church were not psychopaths or sociopaths but sometimes inclined to be in conflict with hurtful behaviors.

Aphorism of the Day, September 14, 2023

The notion of forgiveness and unconditional love can be romantically promulgated basic upon an assumptions of "normal" mental health.  What does forgiveness mean when dealing with sociopaths or psychopaths?  Does forgiveness require that two parties actually understand the concept?

Aphorism of the Day, September 13, 2023

We are not supposed to judge one another and we are supposed to forgive one another.  How do we live with our versions of each other?  Our versions of each other are the assessments we have of each other and one's version of another is probably not the one intended by the other.  Each person is inescapably at the center of one's own perceptual universe at the motherboard of incoming data.  Forgiveness, in part, begins by recognizing that each of us have megalomaniacal potential by being "prisoner" masters of our own perceptual universes.  Each is trying to cope with the incoming data through assessments learned from our previous experience.  Forgiveness begins by acknowledging that each of us is a "coping" being.

Aphorism of the Day, September 12, 2023

Can forgiveness be endless?  Is forgiveness conditional?  If you confess and admit your wrong deed, clean up your act, do penance, and promise amendment of life, then forgiveness can happen?  Is forgiveness only possible with punishment and reparations for what has been done wrong?  Can forgiveness happen for the people whom one loathes?  Is the result of forgiveness a forced tolerance of each other?  Forgiveness is a mystery which the early followers of Jesus quoted him on as a requirement for them to exist as a community.  Forgiveness is not so easy to be precise about except to say that when it has occurred, the offender and the offended have the grace of sensing the meaning and significance of it.

Aphorism of the Day, September 11, 2023

One of the alternatives to forgiveness today is what is called "ghosting."  The offense, the disillusionment, the perceived negative impingement of a person on one's existence results is an avoidance and a pretending that the other person no longer exists.  People "ghost" the church because forgiveness does not happen.  When our versions of each other are not favorable, ghosting can be an alternative to forgiveness.  Forgiveness can happen without equating love with "like."

Aphorism of the Day, September 10, 2023

Our group provides us with language context to constitute our life meanings.  It is difficult to see our life meanings which we take for granted until we see other contrasted meanings for comparison.  Education in time is the constant contrasting of meanings so that we can make better choices in flooding the inner word reservoir from which we act out the meanings of our lives.

Aphorism of the Day, September 9, 2023

One is not just geographically located; one is located within a group and a group provides identity and context for value constitution.  The formation of a new group with successful institutional presence is a mystery.  The early Christians believed that church was successful because in the early days of member disagreement they believed that loyalties to the values of Jesus allowed them to experience him as another presence when they gathered.  That presence provided the practical group wisdom to resolve conflict.

Aphorism of the Day, September 8, 2023

Can the mob energy be sanctified?  Does absolute power within a mob corrupt absolutely?  Do actions as a result of mob energy absolve the individual of wrong doing because one is doing it for the group?  The notion of the church and Spirit within Church is based upon the belief that corporate good can amplify and expand over what any individual can do.  But corporate power can result in corporate leaders acting out wrongly.  Ironically, the phrase "two or three gathered in my name and the presence of Christ," actually contextually refers to the group body realizing the presence of Christ in the practice of disciplining or censuring of a member.  One should always be mindful about the potential blindnesses of one's group and what is done on behalf of the group.

Aphorism of the Day, September 7, 2023

Deconstruction as negation.  "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."  One person is not a gathering, does that mean Christ is not with the individual when the individual is alone?  This might be a hint at the presence which occurs because of what Weber called "collective effervescence."   We personify in language group wisdom, and in the early church the absent Risen Christ was another kind of corporate presence which enhanced the strength in numbers phenomenon.  Mob numbers can strengthen evil; how can the mob mentality be sanctified to render Christly good?

Aphorism of the Day, September 6, 2023

Ponder the body of Christ.  It would refer to the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth.  It was used by Paul as a metaphor for the church.  It is the Eucharistic bread.  It represents the transference of the substantial physical presence of the body to Jesus to another kind of presence of the Risen Christ within the members who claimed to know such a mystical experience of presence.  The New Testament writers use physicality to denoted that something is "really real" or substantial.  The body of Christ highlights the substantial experience which occurs in the event of social fellowship.

Aphorism of the Day, September 5, 2023

Since we are language users and we can call language personal, then we cannot help but personalize our universe and God whom we name as All.

Aphorism of the Day, September 4, 2023

St. Paul's "body of Christ," represented the mystification of the social reality of the church.  Christ as all and in all, was particular all and in all members of the church as the infleshment of the Risen Christ.  In Matthew, it is represented as "two or three gathered in the name of Christ" verifies the presence of Christ.

Aphorism of the Day, September 3, 2023

What most Christians in Western Christianity today have not really grasped is that the New Testament is basically written from and for people who were oppressed and did not have much political or economic power in their world.

Aphorism of the Day, September 2, 2023

Our lives are full of lots of "wishful thinking."  We want favor and goodness, safety and protection, the bad guys to be restrained and punished, and we want to live forever in some way.  Wishful thinking is true; it's empirically true that people are wishful thinkers.  So why might we be offended if the Bible among all kinds of literature includes much wishful thinking.  All of the scenarios of wishful thinking do not actually occur.  Why would we demand that all wishful thinking in biblical wishful thinking actually occur?  Why should we be embarrassed about humanity being wishful thinkers, people of hope who spin scenarios of hope even if they don't actually occur?  Wishful thinkers, people of hope create scenarios which have no proven empirical reality, except the reality of being hopeful.  This is only a problem for people who don't accept the human discursive practices that don't involve the requirement that everything be empirically provable to have legitimate human hopeful meanings.

Aphorism of the Day, September 1, 2023

Much of the biblical writings do not seem to apply to most Bible readers today, especially to those who know the comfort of power, wealth, and privilege.  It is quite fascinating to watch Christians of privilege try to fit their square peg of privilege into the round hole of the Gospel writing to and for oppressed people.  Clue to resolving the poor fit: work tirelessly on behalf of the poor and underprivileged.  And there is that embarrassing word of Jesus, "Sell all you have and give to the poor and follow me."