Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2021
Everyone lives persuaded lives. One who sits in passively may be expressing the persuasiveness of sloth. Persuasion is expressed in how one's life is differentiated in the expression of the hierarchy of one's values. When the oracle of Jesus in John's Gospel said, "this the work, that you be completely persuaded by the one whom God sent," it is an invitation to anchor the standard of our persuasion on the highest ideal person.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2021
Faith is related to what our values are. Our values are manifest in what we are persuaded about. Each should do a value survey of how one uses time, talent and treasure and discover the true objects of one's faith, persuasive motivators.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2021
Everyone has faith, that is the faith, defined by Aristotle in his "Rhetoric." The classic Greek word "pistos" was the goal of rhetoric, namely, "persuasion." That same word "pistos" became the Greek word used for faith or belief in the New Testament. And there remains a connection between "pistos" as persuasion and "pistos" as faith. How so? Faith or belief is what one is persuaded about such that one's life is organized around it. Everyone lives persuaded lives about all kinds of things; some things that we are persuaded about are involuntary within human experience, like using language and needing water and air to live. Other persuasion comes from our cultural contexts and the influences of our lives which motivate our life words and deeds. If everyone has faith, what is the best things to pin voluntary persuasion on? Our highest insights which can motivate us to do love and justice. So, faith is the work in believing in Christ as the drawing force to bring us to live out what is best for our holistic health and the life of our community.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2021
Today is a day to be aware of that first and foremost, we are language users. Language use precedes any knowing at all. We are but syntax and lexicon arising from the Grand Pool of Possiblisms of the entire possible linguistic universe as the proliferation of infinite number of signifiers are in labor to do the impossible, purport to be the Signified. There is a There, there. There is a you and I, there. But we have to use "there" to signify the mystery of what is "there."
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2021
Imagine the entire linguistic universe like a block of granite or a mountain subject to wind and water erosion of time to carve out a variety of appearances of new things being revealed with the passing of time. What is seen implies the entire linguistic universe for differentiation in becoming apparent in its particular difference. The great Eternal Word made a unique appearance in time in Jesus and he differentiated himself from everything else to become confessed by language users, a unique manifestation among all language users.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2021
Ponder the Johannine words of Jesus which creates a chicken and egg situation with the proverbial Luther opposition of faith and works. "This is the work that you believe in him who God sent." Is faith and belief a "human" work? This erases the antipathy of faith and works or it shifts the question to motives of pride and self reliance.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2021
The writer of John's Gospel consistently presents those who are literal as missing the point and then presents the physical as providing a sign of the spiritual. This is all done in the context of presenting God incarnate as Word from the beginning. So the writer of John is but layering the various ways in which Word comes to Word's products in life, with humanity being chiefly constituted by words in what we call language. Can we appreciate the total reflexivity involved: People who use language are naming Word as being from the beginning and also being one with God. In and through having word, we proclaim Word as God from the beginning. I hope that all can appreciate reflexivity of Word and the irony of language users declaring Word as their God from the beginning. It is brilliantly meaningful and true.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2021
What if I read a fairy tale as though it was empirically factual? What if I read a scientific law on gravity as poetry and decide it is an ironic invitation to fly? To be an astute biblical reader one needs to get one's reading discourses correct when interpreting the significance of the text. One of the wrong assumptions of many Bible readers is to assume ancient people did not know the difference between aesthetic discourse and empirical discourse and so God as supernatural and God's hero do not have to consistently follow the laws of nature; they get to selectively violate them so as to impress people about their supernatural status.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2021
One of the goals of faith and religion and biblical literature is to convince us that we are not "mono-genrecists," a word I made up meaning, as language users we are not stuck with commonsense discourse or scientific discourse as our only way to understand ourselves within the dominant definitive human identity as language users. The reason religion has fallen out of favor is because some people of faith are so threatened by the superior actuarial truth performance of scientific discourse, they try to defend biblical faith language as scientific truth language, which at best is comical, and at worst leads to dangerous foolish consequences. Many scientists prefer the fiction of science fiction for their aesthetic discourse to provide them with an abstraction from believing their eyes now to access other aspects of their interior universes of language. In the beginning is the Word; we all are constituted by a universe of Word which generates endless word products about what is inside of us and what is outside of us. Please don't misuse your genres unless you are consciously doing irony or comedy for aesthetic effect.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2021
Can we admit that there has been evolution in morals and justice since biblical time, especially regarding the treatment of people as slaves and women? When we say that the Bible is the word of God or inspired, it does not mean that we absolutize the ways in which biblical cultures were permissive of slavery and the subjugation of women. And yet the practices of those traditional biblical cultures still hold authoritative sway in how some churches regard women and their roles in the church and society. On Mary Magdalene's feast day, we recognize that cultures have maligned her reputation and we owe it to her and to all women the restorative justice of honesty about her life and the granting of full justice, even sacramental justice to the heirs of Mary Magdalene in the leadership of church and society.
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2021
The Gospel of John is presented in a way to encourage people to read about the life of Jesus, not literally, but spiritually, figuratively, and metaphorically. The Gospel writer believes it take faith to look beyond literalism and see spiritually. The physical which has common sense substantiality for people, is used the Gospel writer to indicate that the spiritual is the substantiality which hides under the word veneer of the presentation of physical and sensorial experience. John's Gospel uses the word "sign" to be shocker to turn the switch in one's heart and mind from the literal to the spiritual meaning.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2021
Jesus was presented as being in the prophetic lineage of Moses; he was presented to be one like Moses, and surpassing him both in his appearance in time and in impact of his life on the world. Moses was a water man and bread man. Moses interceded and Manna came from heaven. Moses interceded and water came from rocks and a Red Sea was parted. Jesus multiplied bread for the crowd and he calmed the waters and walked upon it. The record of Moses provided the template for telling the story of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2021
The relationship between the Gospels and the Hebrew Scriptures and other apocalyptic and apocrypha writings which were available to the Gospel writing Christ-base communities, was that these writing provided the template stories for presenting the surpassing greatness of Jesus. If Moses was a "bread from heaven" intercessor, then Jesus was a "loaves and fish" multiplier in being one who fed his people, which in fact is presented as a set up for the metaphor of Jesus himself being the bread of heaven served in the Christ-based Eucharistic communities.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2021
We often reduce health and healing to the experience of an individual trying to delay death and its pre-signaling effects for as long as possible. This focus on the individual means that we don't regard how attention to the overall social health in an actuarial sense helps each individual live much longer. So health care for all instead it being for those who can afford it, financial health for all instead of only for the wealthy, equal educational opportunity for all instead of for those who live in certain neighborhoods. If we attended to the corporate and social health, the individual health of people would rise dramatically. The presence of Jesus in the healing stories was a witness of him bringing the individual into the community that often shunned the sick and unhealthy as "unlucky" for society.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2021
One of the most crucial aspects of health and healing is the social dimension. If the hospitalized have people praying for them and visiting them, they tend to heal quicker than those who are alone in their illness. This this the social reality of health, people caring for each other. Jesus reinstated sick people into community in face of the quarantine of the religious rules and so assert the communal dimension of health and healing. The caring community is a powerful faith "placebo."
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2021
Jesus and his disciples went to a deserted place for rest and they were deluged with a crowd following them. Ministry can sometimes seem like, "no rest for the weary," because human need does not fit the schedules of "vacation" time. There is an exhilarating rest in the ministry to those in need because being inwardly connected with a source that flows to the immediate relevance of ministry can be refreshing. Being in the flow of relevance to significant need can be sublimely refreshing.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2021
How does one relate to the "healing miracles" of Jesus? Anthropologically, there have been and are healers in every society with a wide variety of treatment modalities. The healings of Jesus are often coupled with the forgiveness of sins, removing an unclean spirit, and asserting the validity of the afflicted to be within a community of care. Sinners are "unclean," and to be shunned, a person designated as unclean was ritually impure and an "untouchable," and it was transgressive of Jesus to take the authority to allow an unclean person back into community care and touch. The healings of Jesus involved the reestablishing of a person's status with God in being forgiven, a removal of a person's "unclean" status, and a welcome back into the community of care. These are the ingredients of the "spiritual" healings of Jesus which had very physical and psychosomatic and positive placebo effects. These healings were real.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2021
When one compares the healing ministry of Jesus in how healings are presented in various ways in the Gospels, especially in John's Gospel, one concludes that the theological programmatic presentation of the writer for the specific writing or preaching context for a presentation of the Risen Christ as one who instantiates the health and salvation for humanity, is what is predominate in the writings. Jesus being a healer in his own time, is presented as the Risen Christ being the healer and Savior in all subsequent times.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2021
History or writing or accounts about the past of necessity have to be reductive since one cannot bring to mind every moment of the past in the present because one is living in the present. The events of the past are reduced by the selection of what is important to recount by the selectors in the present as to what is relevant to remember. The past gets reduced to "stories," which are highly edited and re-edited reductions of the occasions of the past. Differences in "stories" of the past can be accounted for in part by the concerns of the story-teller in present. Stories are not successive mirror images of what happened in the past.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2021
The Gospel notes that Palestine in the time of Jesus included lots of people who were sheep without a shepherd. The image of "stray" animals come to mind. Lots of pets with no owners and in need of rescue. Many persons today for a variety of reason are people without care or advocates to negotiate their well-being in the societies where we dwell. And many wealthy persons eschews government relief agencies to provide adequate rescue for those with no advocacy and who lack the basics of food, clothing and shelter or a situation to promote and build their esteem. People without status in society are a challenge for honoring the command to "love our neighbors as ourselves."
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2021
Amos was a reluctant prophet who did not feel like one. He preferred his vocational identity of being a farmer. When one has to speak truth to power with some uncomfortable words, it makes it hard to accept one's role as a prophet. Ironically, being a prophet most of the time really means affirming that we should love God, and love one's neighbor as oneself.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2021
Do not let the "official" prophets do all of the prophesying. Each person needs to have the courage to speak out about the basic kindness of the summary of the law and the golden rule. To live and speak kindness is being "prophetic."
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2021
Don't reduce the definition of a prophet to one who predicts the future. A prophet is one who is sufficiently unbribed by the banalities of evil of one's time and is aloof enough to issue rebukes and warnings about departures from the goodness of love and justice and integrity.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2021
The prophets get characterized as gloom and doom predictors and so they are presented by some as clairvoyant knowers of the future. Prophets are more like probability analysts in the area of human behaviors. They project "statistical" outcomes based upon past and current behaviors. "If you continue these behaviors, it is likely that this will be the spiritual outcome." They also are utopian in that their standard is tuned to God's unattainable perfection for humanity and for our environment (e.g. lamb and lion playing together). We too should be prophets in assessing the outcome of current behaviors in our personal lives but also in behaviors of our communities. We also always need to be informed by the "utopian=the no-such perfect world in actuality," as a way to set the standard to aim our continual efforts to surpass ourselves in excellence in a future state.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2021
The ordained offices of ministry do not exhaust the scope of ministry of an office. The church has priests because the entire ministry of the church is to be priestly, in continual intercession for our world. The same is for the prophetic ministry. The church has prophets because the church is supposed to be prophetic in the continual reform called repentance, first of itself and then in witnessing in the public forum to the values of love and justice. No one can escape being a prophet.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2021
Amos was uncertain about being a prophet. Each person is called to be "prophetic" at time even when one is not in the "ordained office of the prophet." When one sees injustice, unkindness and any deviation from commonplace goodness, one has to step up and be a prophet. How one is to be prophetic is the mystery that each person needs to work out in the situations of one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2021
Prophets like John the Baptist tend to be "unbribed" souls in that they can't be "bought" or pressured to censor the language of what their conscience tells them is just and right. Such people can easily offend the "powers that be" who do not want comments on their decisions or lifestyles. John paid the extreme price of the prophet and for something that we might think trivial today, like calling a divorce and marriage of a ruler inappropriate. The presentation of his beheading indicates that it was instigated by Herodias, a woman scorned by John's rebuke, even while King Herod seemed disappointed that he had to follow the scheme of Herodias. It is an indication of how trivial death can be regarded by people in power and we might think that we have advanced but in subtle ways lots of "little people" get sacrificed for the egos of the powerful.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2021
The reading of the Bible can tempt us to intertwine God and country since it would seem as though God chose Israel in such an exclusive way that every other nation was therefore "unchosen" by God. One could also read the Hebrew Scriptures as a unique literature of the time explaining that the God of all became known in a certain way to a certain people as a first step in letting the rest of the nations also know that God is for all.(See Jonah and Nineveh) There are those who would like to conflate their own very particular Christianity as being definitive of America's official religion. And they forget that our founders specifically sought to disestablish any religion as our State religion, while promoting the free conditions for those who wanted to worship in their particular faith communities or not. Any evangelism which takes away the freedom of choice is not Gospel evangelism. Our founders believed in the freedom of religion but not that any religion should be forced upon anyone. Government and State were not to be used for evangelism even if a majority of person had theistic beliefs. America is based upon citizenry not forcing their piety or impiety upon each other. We wanted to get far away from the former English custom of burning "our heretics" (aka those who did not hold the preferred views) at the stake, or discriminating against them in manifold ways.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2021
The biblical epic is about the phases of uncovering and covering. How so? Uncovering the obvious original blessing and goodness of creation is the meaning of revelation. Sin and shadow are what covers up the obvious. The shadow aspect of human life is able to co-opt the institutions that derived from uncoverings and revelations. So institutions of faith can become expressions of bias, racism, slavery, misogyny, sexism and other social sins and all the while purport to be vehicles of the "revealed/uncovered" truth. Therefore continuous uncovering must happen to explicate what the truth of the divine dignity of the human being means within societies practicing the love and justice for all. The advent of the shadow life of humanity can ruin even "holy" revelations which is why new "uncovering" needs to happen in the continuous reform of personal and social life.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2021
Revelation is insight which is an uncovering of what is. New understanding has the the originality of being "first" in time, but quite old in the sense that everything is but a kind of re-arrangement of the created order to bring forth new combinations. Cars did not exist in biblical times but as possibilities for the rearrangement of the created order to see them arise.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2021
Is revelation an uncovering? Does a sculpture see within a stone what needs to be uncovered to reveal his/her art work? It would seem that the created order is continually being uncovered and it has apparent stability like a stone in the continuity of the traces of what seems to remain similar, but it also has a fluidity and plasticity which allows new things to be uncovered. Reconciling the stone-hard absolute past with the current fluidity for new things to arise and be uncovered with creative inventiveness is the tension we live in because in the realm of freedom evil has a competitive inventiveness with goodness. Things can be used for good or evil and so we seek to know the guiding Spirit of justice who teaches us to use all things well.
