The writers of the New Testament who believed that the sign of God could be seen in all creation believed that Jesus Christ was a particular human signature of God in the world to signify that God can be intensely particular and intensely general.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2024
Are language products mostly "selfish" since they are generated from the perspective of the one or ones who generate them? Would this make AI statements "unselfish" because they purport to have a distance from any particular "constructing ego?" Or are AI statements like the mercenaries on behalf of the egos who seek their generation on behalf of an "ego" position?
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2024
According to the Johannine words of Jesus, the "work" is believing in the one whom God sends. Belief or being persuaded reveals what the human vocation is. We are persuaded people, and the question remains, "about what are we persuaded?" Persuasion is never final; it is on-going and always has to be continually informed and applied in new arising situations.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2024
From Anselm we learned that God is a linguistic tautology. By definition, God means the greatest, and how could the greatest be the greatest if the greatest did not exist. Anselm invites people to try to drop from human vocabulary the word God and the standard meaning of God. While we're at it we can try to pretend that everything that was, is, and shall be does not "exist" either. Whatever we perceive to be existing from our very limited perspective, there is, was, and will always be MORE.
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2024
The significance of Jesus was not new for the Gospel writers since for them he was known in their Risen Christ experience in a mystical event. The Gospels are about tying the mysticism of the early followers of Jesus to the person of Jesus of Nazareth by presenting narratives of Jesus tinged with already mystical outcomes of the Risen Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2024
The "sign"ificance of signs occur within paradigms of interpretation or hermeneutic circles. If one does not understand the hermeneutic context, the "sign" cannot signify as intended by the sign maker.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2024
What is the relationship between a sign and language? A sign is a significant event of and in language marking a telling item of information distinguished from other word events to influence life decisions and human behaviors. A stop sign changes the meaning of a street corner in influencing decision and behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2024
A chief sign of human identity is having language. Language is the life of being signatory or constantly being involved in a medium with word products which purport to refer to or be signs of things which are not themselves. What words refer to or Reality itself is unknowable in itself because we are slaves to the medium of continuous signification involving a continuous deferring of synonyms. This is this is this is this is this is this......
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2024
Paul prayed that people would comprehend the love of Christ and be filled with the fullness of God. The goal of life is to have surfaced the omnipresence of the divine in various immanent events.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2024
The stories of the multiplication of loaves identifies Jesus as concerned about the masses being fed. Any follower of Jesus should also be concerned that everyone has enough to eat. Food is the basic medicine of living.
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2024
Sheep without shepherds are people vulnerable to demagoguery of kleptocrats convincing the ignorant that the interest of the wealthy greedy is the common good for all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2024
Some people have the fortune of experiencing their lives being impinged upon by the Plenitude of Existence as a friendly and supporting and affirming reality. Others do not have this fortune which means that who who have the fortune need to become the nurturing presence for those who don't see existence itself as an original blessing.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2024
Everything is mutually connected. The human mind has the (dys)ability to create the illusion of alienation and separation with resulting attempts to wreck connection with chaos and its acolytes of hatred and evil.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2024
Human beings do not have the capacity to "see" God and live; human beings have the ability to be in connection with God who contains all in exterior and interior ways. Meditation is the practice of finding the interior hum caused by the flood of infinity with which all things are connected.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2024
Paul understood the social meaning of the cross of Christ as a death to the hostilities which pertained between people formerly regarding each others as foreigners, aliens, and strangers. Does anyone regard the cross of Christ in this way today? Often it is used by people to create barriers and make us even more foreign to each other.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2024
The biblical use of the word shepherd refers to non-exploitive leadership of the vulnerable. We often see political "leaders" and religious "leaders" who are the antithesis of non-exploitive leadership.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2024
The observation of the crowd as "sheep without a shepherd" invites reflections upon the need for non-exploitative leadership in politics, religion, and in any community requiring group collaboration. In politics, business, and religion exploiters use the "a sucker is born every minute" tendency of the mob.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2024
Has any historical figure had more of an afterlife effect than Jesus of Nazareth?
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2024
Can history be written without any reference to heroic figures? Only people who stand out get remembered and documented. A history of the unknown would be an oxymoron. Our traditions and stories of identity have been formed by what has come to language about seminal people in history. Our language traditions speak us before we consciously choose to use them. By choosing not to use certain words or ideas from inherited language traditions does not erase them from being foundational in our having been structured by them.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2024
St. Paul regarded to be his mystical relationship with the Risen Christ as different but equal in importance to Peter's actual experience of Jesus, plus Peter also had a mystical Post-resurrection experience too. It is one thing to say that mystical experiences actually happened, it is another thing to say what they mean and how the one who experiences such interprets the experience. Religious experiences are so much different from commonsense or empirical experiences, it is important not to equate them. Mystical experience is more like one's aesthetic experience with music, poetry, and art rather than describing the events of a lab experience.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2024
Today we have become specific manifestations of former probabilities. But probabilities are but current interpretations of what we think were statistical approximations of what we think caused the specific outcomes of the present, which are also interpretations of what a particular language user describes within the language tradition of his or her community.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2024
What does Word of God mean? For some it means the community process by which certain writings came to be designated as the official textbook of their communities. For others it means that the divine directly created these words and so there is an implied omniscience behind every word in the Bible. In the funneling of a great God into the limitation of human experience, there is an emptying of God as God into God as analogical human communication. The emptying occurs in human cultures with all the limitations of the particular cultures. We can absolutize the notion of love, without absolutizing what the specific practices of love were in biblical cultures. Beyond the written words of text, there is the notion of God as Word itself which is a profoundly expansive reservoir vaster than what can be written on pages.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2024
Prayer like the Psalms models what can be a continuous commentary on what is happening in one's life and the life of the world. Stating the obvious as interpreted by the commentator before God has less to do with God and more to do with our orientation and coping with life as it is, laced with lots of hope for what we wish it might be. Prayer is about changing the one who is praying so as to be able to be the best possible agent of change.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2024
With advent of artificial intelligence the possibility of HAL like entities taking significant control over human life becomes real, some for good and some for terrifying outcomes. In the big theodicy question does an Omni-Becoming Being allowing genuine freedom from all non-omni-becoming beings risk the takeover of the whole by bad actors? Does the Omni-Sustainer remain what is greatest if the majority of what lives and moves and have being within the Omni-Sustainer chooses what is bad? Or is there a self-correction by the preponderance of non-sentient volitional entities which are "amoral" when contrasted with any meaning of human morality. Do non-sentient "amoral" agents eventual correct bad human agency?
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2024
Time and language go together because language involves sequences.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2024
The actual is the model for what might be ideal because the actual is always so time-time as to be the "not yet" of perfection.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2024
Seems as when the church has had outward position and power in society, it tends to reject or de-emphasize the hidden or the mystical and over identifies itself with the literal and the visual. The suffering or hidden church emphasizes the always already inner realm of the divine while eschewing attachment to external idols.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2024
The familiarity which breeds contempt may be the human habit of even getting bored with good things and not appreciating the good until it is gone, like when people are so familiar with democracy and yet do not vote or vote for someone who is not in favor of democracy.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2024
Totality is not final because it is the always already accumulating and integrating. That which is omni-becoming says in the instance of any occasion, "I contain you and have merged you with everything else."
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2024
There is a voluntary weakness of God. It is the power of restraint in the allowing of genuine freedom which is evident in the seemingly apparent ascendency of the greedy and powerful to oppress or resist being sharing stewards in equal and just ways with all people. The religion of Jesus is mostly the poor using their freedom to take care of those who also are poor. This is the most powerful way to use freedom. (see the beatitudes)
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2024
The cliche is "familiarity breeds contempt." Getting tired of or bored with the familiar may be a sign of a need for change or the need for a conversion to a new paradigm in thinking.
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