Aphorism of the Day, September 30, 2022
Having faith to cast mulberry trees into the sea, may be viewed as an ironic hyperbolic statement of Jesus, perhaps satire about a view of faith which spins tales of impractical non-empirically reality. Casting mulberry trees into the sea might have some "entertainment" value, but we should note that the words of Jesus are followed by the example of the "slave" doing mustard seed duties and not expecting praise or fanfare. Faith is to be highly pragmatic and less about spinning fantastic non-empirically verifiable entertaining possibilities.
Aphorism of the Day, September 29, 2022
To extrapolate Jesus to the contemporary time, the question is posed, "What would Jesus do/say/think? In our time he probably would not use the example of slaves and slavery in illustrative parables. How often does what Jesus did and said seem to contradict what a humane and enlightened person would do and say in our time and place? The importance of contextual finesse cannot be underestimated in any attempt at adequate insights in the quest for love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, September 28, 2022
Some of the expressions of Jesus seem like exaggerated "slams" on the quality of faith which he found or perhaps a satire upon the magical thinking that he found regarding faith. If your faith was like a mustard seed, then you could uproot mulberry trees and throw them into the see. That's implying in a mocking way that magical thinking faith is unrealistic and therefore of no use. What is useful is getting on with the service of one's life without needing praise or fanfare. Perhaps we have missed the satirical side of Jesus-speak.
Aphorism of the Day, September 27, 2022
In the hyperbolic expressions of Jesus, he said small tiny mustard seed faith could do some logic defying things, even unnecessary things: Why would one want to tele-port a mulberry tree into the sea? Why not use mustard seed faith to feed the entire world; a more humane thing to do than commanding tree to take a swim. The point is to organize the persuasion of one's life around important goals and to progressively see those goals attained. And in the ordinary times of living persuasively toward best values, one should not expect praise for the obvious good way to live.
Aphorism of the Day, September 26, 2022
In our days of insecurity, it seems as though we want praise and credit for doing things that are actually good for us and the world. Note how we have had to make what is good, right, just, and loving into the heroic. We are like grade school children wanting "stars" on our papers for doing the obvious good things. This probably happens because we have seen a reversal: Instead evil being a deprivation of the normalcy of good, the good has become the departure from the "normalcy" of evil.
Aphorism of the Day, September 25, 2022
The rich man and Lazarus parable of Jesus is a message to the rich people of this world? Do you want to have the chasm between the rich and the poor to be the chief work and character of your life forever?
Aphorism of the Day, September 24, 2022
The is a "fixed chasm" between. This expresses the reality of an unbridged canyon between the wealthy and the poor which Jesus said could become the reality of one's "eternal" character, i.e. building ruts into canyons of separation instead of building bridges of commerce so all can have enough.
Aphorism of the Day, September 23, 2022
The bosom of Abraham is a metaphor is a parable of Jesus for an imagined post-life fellowship. Jesus was teaching about living in this life by asking, "Who do you want to hang out with as the model of your behavior?" Lazarus is presented as one who hung out with Abraham in his afterlife. Jesus used the trope of the afterlife as the art of persuading in the now
Aphorism of the Day, September 22, 2022
Images of the afterlife are always present within this life, which means the focus is not really on the afterlife which cannot be empirically known but mainly as an aferlife trope to motivate current living decisions.
Aphorism of the Day, September 21, 2022
"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." What kinds of evil come from the love of money? Greed involves the takeover of the resources which can be used to give everyone a decent living. That is a chief evil and yet it is valorized in our world today.
Aphorism of the Day, September 20, 2022
The Rich Man and Lazarus parable is a story about the incredible chasm which happens between people who live in close proximity to each other. People are "physical" neighbors without being "neighborly."
Aphorism of the Day, September 19, 2022
The coincidence of the deaths of the beggar leper Lazarus and the greedy Rich Man in the parable of Jesus was a teaching about the absoluteness of past deeds which form human character. The Rich Man was to be forever known as the greedy person who did not regard the begging Lazarus at his gate. This was his eternal legacy for all who continued to live. What kind of "eternal" legacy do we want to live for those who continue to live after us?
Aphorism of the Day, September 18, 2022
Can greed be converted to make wealth serve God? What would wealth serving God look like, since God has all? Wealth serving God would be the distribution of resources so that everyone had enough.
Aphorism of the Day, September 17, 2022
The words of Jesus often use a negative in ironic ways to imply a positive. As in, it is "good" to be lost, since being lost means that the one who has lost really values what and who has been lost.
Aphorism of the Day, September 16, 2022
The Bible includes writings over thousands of year for the purpose of assigning community identity through the various circumstances with reference to their relationship to their highest value, called God. And God, the reference point for highest value also underwent a continual re-presentation process based upon new situation. The re-presentation of the divine in community changed significantly with Jesus of Nazareth and the community which derived from him.
Aphorism of the Day, September 15, 2022
A negative is often used to make a positive points, as a parent saying to a child, "if you studied as much as you played video games, you would be an "A" student." Jesus used a negative regarding a shrewd steward to make a similar point. If good people were as diligent in goodness as bad people were diligent in evil, imagine the results. The point: Life energy is neutral, make it really good by using it aright.
Aphorism of Day, September 14, 2022
Language concrescence? As science became the most practical way for establishing replication of "objectivity," it became the "gold" standard of superlative meaning aka "truth." So something is meaningful if and only if it can be verified or at least open to falsification in the future. As the gold standard of truth became verification, figurative and artistic language became undervalued as "meaningful" truth. So to qualify for scientific "truth standard" biblical literalists began to present and understand most biblical words as those which could be empirically verified. In doing so they diminished the truth value, poetic value, figurative and moral value of biblical language. Pure scientific values have led to the worst cruel human invention thus proving we need moral, spiritual, and ethical values to guide scientific practice.
Aphorism of the Day, September 13, 2022
Why can't you serve God and wealth? If God is the maker and ground of all wealth, all wealth is God's because God outlives all. Wealth cannot be equal to God, so why treat it that way?
Aphorism of the Day, September 12, 2022
Words of Jesus: "You can't serve God and wealth." But can you serve God with your wealth by recognizing that we are are but stewards of God's wealth?
Aphorism of the Day, September 11, 2022
Interesting transformation and transvaluation: Saul of Tarsus went from being a righteous religious person rounding up "sinners who were followers of Christ," to become Paul who was "chief of sinners" because he had persecuted followers of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, September 10, 2022
In the deutero-words of Paul, he was the "foremost of sinners." He was a "lost" person who was found by Christ because God is in the finding business of all who wish to be found, and some like Paul did not particularly wish to be found but he came to "see the light."
Aphorism of the Day, September 9, 2022
We all live in "Subsequency" and "Aftermath-hood," because life includes the past. Subsuquency in fact makes the past something it was not when what the past was when it was present action. The biblical writings are "Subsequency" in text interpreting the past in light of what was happening in the occasions of the writer when writing.
Aphorism of the Day, September 8, 2022
The irony of being lost is that it means what or who is lost is valued by the one who has lost the valued entity. And in the words of Jesus, God values those of us in the fog of "being lost."
Aphorism of the Day, September 7, 2022
Being lost is a metaphor used in the words of Jesus for the human condition for many. Each person has the natural "GPS" within oneself of the divine image, yet we can be alienated from that "GPS" within ourselves and be lost because we make our environment unfamiliar by not being able to know that we live and move and have our being in God. The life of Jesus was to restore us with our "GPS" of being made in the image of God.
Aphorism of the Day, September 6, 2022
Gospel hyperbole: "All tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus." Really, all is quite a inclusive word. It probably means that the Jesus Movement was having an appeal to groups of people who were not keeping the ritual purity practices required to be labeled as a "non-sinner." We need to be careful about who we regard to be "unacceptable" sinners. We are all always "missing the marking" of perfection which is the definition of sinning; in our group identities we can come to make our group rules as what defines sinning or not sinning.
Aphorism of the Day, September 5, 2022
The metaphor of being lost is used in the Gospel words of Jesus. A young child "lost" at the mall may not realize it until he or she realizes being no longer in visual contact with parents. Parents are horrified about losing a child with self-accusation for allowing a child to slip away even while being total consumed with love to reunite with one's child. People as God's children both in willfulness and ignorance get lost from our heavenly parent. Are we angry at the God of freedom who lets us wander, or delighted that a caring God wants us to be found and returned into a valued relationship?
Aphorism of the Day, September 4, 2022
The words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel teach us to use actuarial wisdom in assessing what a call to follow him might entail. Ironically, one can follow in the path of Christ and often feel like one was woefully prepared for what occurred. By wishing that one hadn't followed the Christ-call, one can pretend to erase the reality of having done so with naivete. "I didn't know what I was getting into." And more the self-disillusionment of "I thought that I had it in me to do it better."
Aphorism of Day, September 3, 2022
The truly ironic words of Jesus about hating family members as a qualification for being a follower is a profound witness against biblical literalism.
Aphorism of the Day, September 2, 2022
Biblical language is written from the perspective of "providence," which is a retroactive view, a "future anterior" presentation, "it will have happened in this way." The presentation of God as providential "force" is reductionistic and a projection of a belief that God must be a personal being whose traces in the creative order are capable of disciplinary outcomes toward perfectability for humans who possess the highest level of freedom within the creative order. The language for All gets abbreviated as God's "direct" action, when the actions of God unabbreviated are deep respect for the freedom abroad within all that has existence.
Aphorism of the Day, September 1, 2022
You cannot be a disciple of Jesus unless you give up all your possessions. This a quote from Jesus, and certainly poetic hyperbole because the greatest possession is life itself, and Jesus also said one has to give up one's life. If one subscribes to having a creator who owns everything, then one never possesses anything including one's own life, because it already, always belong to someone. If one's life is not one's own, it does not belong to one, and so it is not one's to give. Possessing one's life is the illusion of ownership but ownership would assume permanent duration which no one has.
