Aphorism of the Day, October 31, 2023
The words of Jesus are hard for people who wish to look religious instead of being people who know they are ever imperfect but perfectible through the educational program of repentance. Humility is easy for those who know that they need to be so much more than they are now, and further humbled by the divine tolerance of grace for much more time to improve.
Aphorism of the Day, October 30, 2023
Disillusionment can be caused and cured by surpassing excellence. Actual performance fail in contrast with what is ideal can cause disillusionment. But the ideal can cure disillusionment by being carrot of perfection which keeps us going in the right direction. I think this is why Jesus said the "Messiah" is to be our instructor. The Messiah is that continually self surpassing person who beckons us beyond pride for what we have achieved and disillusionment for what we have not acheived.
Aphorism of the Day, October 29, 2023
The presence of laws and rules has not been able to prevent war in our world, because laws primarily do not have universal force since there has been no universal force to enforce laws, even as we have the history of Empires which aspired to have the order of the emperor imposed upon the world that was under the control of the emperor. Laws occur because the history of humanity proves that love often fails in human practice, and when it fails badly people can get hurt. War is the attempt by force to force laws and rules upon other people or to resist the attempt of being forced to follow the laws of other people.
Aphorism of the Day, October 28, 2023
Laws in practice can become legalism when the performance of the rules is used to enhanced the superiority of the performer rather than the beauty of the order for which laws are intended.
Aphorism of the Day, October 27, 2023
When the teaching function of the law is lost, the law can become legalism as service to the insiders who keep all the finer rules and the outsiders who are condemned as non-adherents.
Aphorism of the Day, October 26, 2023
The summary of the Law is given to promote criteria for discerning how one is to act without specific knowledge of all rules and regulations. Does what I do and say comport with loving God and my neighbor?
Aphorism of the Day, October 25, 2023
The Hebrew Scriptures present Moses as the one who received law, but he was also the model law liver, the leader who instantiated the law of relationship with the divine. Some would like to display the text of the law as their "party" symbol when the law is much more. It is continuous relationship between God and people in community toward being in better relationship with both.
Aphorism of the Day, October 24, 2023
Could the New Testament writings be designated as writings about how to cope being oppressed communities within the Roman Empire? How could such documents be turned on their head when the community is no longer oppressed but is a preferred of religion the Empire and subsequent empires? "Empire" Christians have perhaps been misappropriating the New Testament writings.
Aphorism of the Day, October 23, 2023
All laws are not equivalent in their importance. Jesus and Paul established the law to love as the most important law. Thou shalt love God and neighbor. Easier commanded than fulfilled but the greatness of the law of love is it is completely open ended to better future fulfillment.
Aphorism of the Day, October 22, 2023
How would God prove divine "catholicity," that is divine existence and worthiness to be worshipped by all? Not like a Caesar-god who coerced the acceptance of his greatness throughout the world empire. A God of love works through the seeming weakness of luring through the winsome persuasiveness of goodness people who share a true freedom to reject winsome love. In the total field of probabilities, as theists we are required to hold that God has invisible "catholicity" even when all free agents do not recognize it.
Aphorism of the Day, October 21, 2023
One can note that the cult of the Emperor in the Roman Empire was an attempt at a "catholic" religion. The religion of the Jesus Movement was based upon the always already invisible kingdom of God because the divine image is stamped upon everything. That is what is "catholic" about God.
Aphorism of the Day, October 20, 2023
God is the superlative trope of totality, not because any human can comprehend totality or claim exclusive right to claim precision about it. For those uncomfortable with using the God-trope, they cannot avoid assuming the trope of totality which is an alway already trope of the plenitudinous omni-discursive existence in a world infinite differences. To say one word is to assume the total universe of discourse. Theists are persuaded to make the case that language as essentially definitive of what personhood means, are willing to say that their God-trope is also personal, but extra-personal in amassing the entire linguistic universe.
Aphorism of the Day, October 19, 2023
Was Israel suppose to be a witness community of a functional theocracy to spread to be a world theocracy? Was Christendom supposed to be the fulfillment of a world theocracy? Islam? Buddhism? Hinduism? Do promoters of every great insight want that insight to be the categorical imperative, viz., that which is something winsomely appropriate for everyone? Probably what is the most functional theocratic insight is that God as Word means that everyone is a language user and what language instantiates is a world of differences. Differences as the "categorical imperative" that we live with means that language requires us to live oxymoronic lives.
Aphorism of the Day, October 18, 2023
For those who want to avoid politics, they must falsify the observation of John Donne, "No man (person) is an island." One cannot avoid the group; in trying to do so one only amplifies the power of the group over one, because why else would one avoid relationships unless the power of the group paralyzed the escapee to a supposed "quietism." Such quietism is in itself a political statement and an act of omission to be active in doing good within community. The fact that one cannot cannot persuade the entire community to all of one's values is no reason to commit the futility of hermitism.
Aphorism of the Day, October 17, 2023
Should taxes be paid to the Caesar? Paul, who believed his citizenship was in heaven suggested praying for and submitting to the authorities, even while others are quoted as saying, "we have to obey God rather than "men." Simplistic recommendations for church and state relationship don't work because the field of probable situations often leads to the need for context specific wisdom.
Aphorism of the Day, October 16, 2023
Irony of history. Jesus was asked whether tax should be paid to the emperor and he said to render unto Caesar. Today and in many places for many years the "church" has been "empire identified," and has been tax exempt.
Aphorism of the Day, October 15, 2023
The parables of Jesus often include horrifying descriptions of punishment and yet this is the shocking reality and outcomes of human lovelessness. When humans live unloving lives they end up being their own punishment and their own nightmare in hurting the innocent. Warring is the hell that we don't have to wait for an imagined afterlife to experience.
Aphorism of the Day, October 14, 2023
Do morals and ethics evolve? Can we absolutize the cultural practices of slavery and subjugation of women found in the people who generated the Bible and assume it was God's eternal will? The human understanding of what is superlative is always in need of development through new insights about applied justice to people in new situations.
Aphorism of the Day, October 13, 2023
The "last shall be first," states the reality of the priority of the now since time only allows us to be trapped in the now, which is the latest and it is first because it is the only time that exists continuously.
Aphorism of the Day, October 12, 2023
Everyone and everything lives at an equidistance from divine omnipresence, but sentient humans build hierarchies of closeness or distance from awareness of that presence.
Aphorism of the Day, October 11, 2023
The parables of Jesus reveal the unavoidable hierarchies which occur with the use of language and the perpetual choices that are made which indicate preferences, like the societal "A lists" of seeming "preferred" people. Jesus was the one who continually challenged hierarchies by "choosing" or giving voice and preference to those who were kept off the prevailing "A lists."
Aphorism of the Day, October 10, 2023
Sometimes the spiritual and the natural are pitted against each other in a perpetual dualism in people's religious life. Perhaps the spiritual should be regarded as the natural recognition of being made in the image of God and accessing original grace of being designated by the creating God as "good."
We Aphorism of the Day, October 9, 2023
A parable of Jesus presents the "a lists" of religious life as uninterested in being invited to wedding party of God. People have other things to do rather than go to a "God-party." How is it that the wedding of the divine and the human has become so uninteresting? It could be that religious leaders often are about their own parties and are missing the big one that is always already going on.
Aphorism of the Day, October 8, 2023
In the experience of human smallness in the experience of a much bigger world and with short duration of the life of the individual, people with language understand language to be the essence of relationality. From relationality, we derive what we call personhood as definitive of each in community. Since we are locked into the alway already interpretive grid of language, the language of personhood, we interpret the greatness beyond our smallness using personalisms. And so greatness beyond our smallness comes to language as the person of God. To say that having language is impersonal is to deny the primary feature of humanity.
Aphorism of the Day, October 7, 2023
A parable of Jesus seems to present God as the absentee landlord of the universe and whose son is not accepted as a respected rent collector. People have been bad tenants in the short time that we have access to the living quarters of this world. When we pay the rent of respect to the divine owner of all we can receive stewardship wisdom to share the gifts and have more than adequate enjoyment.
Aphorism of the Day, October 6, 2023
At the macro level the Bible is a book of writers about the wisdom of people realizing their "God-identity" and doing it within micro-communities as modeling what it means to live toward the highest human potential in love and justice. Through the writings people are being invited to realize their highest selves and even as the ancient cultures from which the biblical writings were generated did not achieve the fullness of love and justice, we in our time are still invited to surpass ourselves and the cultures of the past in living justice.
Aphorism of the Day, October 5, 2023
The New Testament are essentially writings which promotes the availability of God to all people because of the understanding of the presentation of the nature of God in the witness and teachings of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, October 4, 2023
"The kingdom of God will be taken from you...." How does this happen? It's like coming home and finding the locks on the door have been changed. New keys have been issued to upgrade entrance and some refuse the upgrade. The kingdom of God hasn't really changed, it's that human perceptions of love and justice get clarify which nullify old ways of perception. As Joseph Campbell once said, "Yesterday's virtues can be tomorrow's vice." See slavery and the subjugation of women; you can't practice these and claim the authority of the kingdom of God.
Aphorism of the Day, October 3, 2023
A parable of Jesus illustrates the alway already kingdom of God in which we live and many have forgotten the ultimate ownership of the One who is everlasting. People who have forgotten that God owns all have usurped ownership and they punish those who remind them of the divine owner of all. The New Testament writers believed that Jesus was the great reminder from God about the ownership of all in time by the Everlasting.
Aphorism of the Day, October 2, 2023
Codified law has to keep up with the insights gained from applied justice. Applied justice should render empathy and life situations reveal to us people in conditions who have not had kindness rendered to them given the heretofore habits of society. New law and recommended behaviors derive to include previously neglected people the status of not only protection of the law but dignified value within the community. It is shameful that applied justice for "new recipients" is denigrated with the term "woke." Let us "awake" to applied justice in our treatment of persons who have been left out.
Aphorism of the Day, October 1, 2023
One might say that divine authority as it includes the respects shared freedom with every entity is the lure caused by being together now and forever and accepting that the lure is for us to learn to be together well. Authority as lure rather than coercion is the invitation to love.
