What we’re starting to find out about the gigantic and minuscule character of our galaxy and the universe makes belief in God for me both harder and easier. Harder because of the overwhelmingly momentous size of it all and the seemingly endless frontiers yet to be discovered and explored. It appears to go on and on and on. Easier because the detail is so exquisitely striking and looks like an adequate, viable, and richly textured development of life from a prior personal source who has a creative loving impulse. It seems loaded with meaning and significance.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Monday, October 7, 2019
Reflection for the Week - October 7
Imagination is an essential of life and a pathway to the discovery of truth. Reason, sense observation, feeling, and our experience all suffer severe impoverishment without the recognition that imagination is the lynch pin that holds them together in a related, yet distinct manner. Thus, I’d wager, imagination is at the core of being and it makes a startling contribution to all we know.
Friday, October 4, 2019
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Thursday Thoughts - October 3
Being, knowledge, genetics, neuroscience, hermeneutics, and ethics have a tendency to operate as monologues closed into separate compartments, but none of them can go it alone, since the human niche is far more complex than any one discipline can account for. Thus, a dialogue between each informer is necessary in order to lead us in a better direction and in so doing, to give us enriched, even sumptuous innovative and truth oriented perspectives and possibilities about life in the world.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Living Spiritual Rhythms - October 2
Faith seeking understanding is often assumed by evangelicals to be “spiritual,” but I’d wager that unless it’s complemented by understanding seeking faith, it’s nothing of the sort. There are no simple templates for spirituality. So much is complex, which means tension. And in light of the unfolding and relentless density of the world, we’d better get used to it.
Monday, September 30, 2019
Reflection for the Week - September 30
A recent discussion reminded me again of the crucial issue of “starting points’ for doing theology. Fundamentalists, but others too, claim to ‘start’ with God and the biblical text, and if you don’t, you’re not quite measuring up to them. So, it goes. “Since we start with God and the Bible, let us tell you all about who God is, exactly what God is doing, and precisely what the Bible says.” Such blustering, I’d wager, amounts to an illusion on several levels, but it’s primarily false because humans have to start with and from themselves in the world, before ever getting to God and the biblical text. Beginning with interpreting ourselves, we then move to interpreting God and text, and then back to ourselves. No one here has ‘leverage’ or a ‘moral high ground’ start point. This means, as interpreters, it’s impossible to actually ignore or bracket out ourselves and the world, which are both significant features of any ‘hermeneutically realistic’ trajectory for better interpretation.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Thursday Thoughts - September 26
Catharsis, while a necessary part of the journey towards our destiny, is not an end in and of itself. Rather, a deep soothing liberation is to lead to a renewed conviction of life, in spite of the tragic circumstances that have blown the world apart in the first place. Such a poetic and imaginative impulse will hopefully lure us in the direction of a confident and humble understanding that somehow at some time God is going to transform everything.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Living Spiritual Rhythms - September 25
Since we’re at a “defining moment” in the history of Christianity, I’d wager it’s time for a re-examination of who God is and what God does. Tread carefully, but tread we must. The biblical writers give an Ancient Near Eastern or Greco-Roman picture of God, and their limited understanding of the natural world had a significant influence on their theologies. We are better informed today about nature, notably evolution, and this can’t help but cause us to re-view the theologies of those who precede us. Some of these may be worth holding on to, yet others will have to be let go of. The days where the Christian faith attempted to stand on the biblical text alone for its theology are over. It’s now just a matter of how long it will take for Christians to accept this, consult multiple informers, and refigure what they believe about God and the world.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Reflection for the Week - September 23
In today’s harsh reality of selfishness and greed, some say there is no such thing as a gift. Giving is always with motive or interest and that disqualifies it. I would argue that while motive or interest will always be with us in giving, it need not necessarily abolish gift, as this would seem to depend on what the motive or interest are. Let’s say a canceling of gift might be the case if one gave it with the motive of receiving something in return, but if one gifts with a motive to satisfy or please the other and requires nothing in return, then the gift character of giving would not be nullified. That is, other interest wins—over a perverse self-interest—and preserves the possibility of true gift.
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Thursday Thoughts - September 19
Mark’s story is full of role reversals. Those who
think they see and hear are blind and deaf and those who are blind and deaf see
and hear. A life of following Jesus is not about possessing people and things
but about dispossession; being willing to let go, take risks, be courageous,
and not to fear. To be great you have to be least and the first will be last
and the last first. Those who want to save their lives will have to lose them
for the sake of Jesus and the gospel. And in perhaps one of the most striking
reversals of all, it is the demons and unclean spirits who know who Jesus is,
while the disciples don’t > go figure.
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