We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
We may often be reluctant to say we know too much about God, self, other and world, but is it possible to be too epistemologically modest?
A cursory look at the headlines shows that a million acres have burned in drought stricken Texas, someone is accused of bribing oil officials, nuclear destruction is wrecking lives, terrorist alerts are on the rise, storms and tornadoes are sweeping through parts of the world, Christians are being persecuted, the Arab world is in growing disarray with no end to the killing in sight, and as the one year after de-versary of the Gulf disaster arrived, recovery is moving all too slowly. When you add to this the economic crisis, unemployment, and the danger of the collapse of political stability, it appears that we find ourselves close to a meltdown. As we peer into the hourglass, we discover the grains of sand are not unlimited. How long, oh Lord? If ever there was a moment to turn to the living God, it is now. To wake up, be prepared, and come to our senses, means we have to engage the breakdown of the world and present the gospel in the teeth of the relevant and pertinent challenges we face, as we are truly living in perilous times.
In this post-Easter week, as our world continues in its rhythm, seemingly untouched by the dramatic event of the resurrection of Christ, we want to focus on at least these five points: 1) The resurrection of the dead is relevant to creation, salvation, and eternity; to the past, present, and future. 2) Death, as a separation from the Living One, is an enemy that will one day be destroyed. 3) The body is important to and for Christian spirituality—it is and forever intends to be embodied. 4) Resurrection is an affirmation of life that puts us in conflict with sin and evil. It provides a way into a deep and living tension. 5) Faith and action must be grounded in the truth and reality of the resurrection of Christ, which is to permeate all of who we are and what we do.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Why are you convinced or not convinced that Jesus was raised from the dead in history?
The failure to recognize that there are usually two dangers and not merely one, will lead to serious misunderstandings of Christian truth. Think for a moment about the danger of giving up the claim of the biblical informer that God is creator. While this is a central truth to hold on to, if we do not consider that there is another danger, namely, not paying significant attention to the force of the natural world informer, then we will undoubtedly fall into misrepresenting God in our interpretations. Reflect on another example; the insistence of a traditional interpretation. Holding to tradition and whether or not someone does, becomes the sole mark of fidelity. Yet, should we not consider the potential liability of tradition, we engage in something equally problematic. In fairness, we want to level the playing field as much as possible in that this is the first step towards better interpretation. When we only worry about one danger, we may unwittingly fall into another. Keep alert to the two dangers perspective.
Christians all too often become inoculated against the real. Plagued by inauthentic churches peddling illusions, and the covert deception of unreal images that manifest themselves in misplaced expectations and extravagant regimes, believers are facing serious impoverishment and succumbing to bogus spirituality. Instead of having the power of the real, the testimony to truth, and a life of authenticity, we unfortunately seem to have little to offer a world gone mad. Our plight, at times, seems overwhelming, yet God continues to shape and form a people to proclaim the good news and its credibility, and longs for us to leave the rest behind and to join in the drama of his creative and redemptive intentionality, which is as real as it gets.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
ZZ is closed for today, 14 April, as I’m out of town. I’m looking forward to renewing the conversation and dialogue on 21 April. For now – Bonjour.
To find our way along in this world is a complex endeavor. We go this way and then that. True, God is faithful, as promised, to direct the lives of his children, but he leaves some important matters up to us. We are not without responsibility, yet cannot carry it all on our own. And that’s as it should be. Seems God wants us to achieve, to make good choices, and to grow in wisdom, while trusting him for the outcome.
Empires are impersonal. Trading in statistics, quotas, and mis-information, they entice us into embracing a falsification of the real and authentic. We tremble at the call to resist and fear the prospect of an exile from the facts, figures, and calculations. Threatened by the radical turn to a personal relationality and a potential loss of an assumed sense of equilibrium, we are then comfortably recycled back into the flow of the Empires. To leave Empire ways behind is a continual challenge, but the stakes are high, as a fear of failure to engage with people, to be personal and relational towards the other, will silence our ability to speak, to hear, and to love.
Following the question on ZigZag yesterday here are a few thoughts. The fierce debate about Christian living in the face of Empire is well known. My brief response to the question goes something like this. While there are various sources to explore, I was thinking along the lines of the prophets (Isa; Jer; Ezk; Dan) and 1 Peter, where there seems to be a working out of the types of Empire living that are appropriate for us. That is, in these texts, we encounter, in a deft and wise manner, the coming to terms with Empire. This includes some accommodation and some resistance. Finding our way along will be arduous, and the where and when we resist or accommodate not always precisely clear, yet while it won’t be perfect, we should be a standing for God’s truth and love, as we seek to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Being aliens is no easy task and it will require a living hope for redemption and transformation, no matter how oppressive or inviting Empire may appear to be.
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What strategies are Christians to employ, living as we all do, in the shadow of Empire?
Posing unanswerable questions about God and refusing to trust if the answers are not forthcoming is to be a Capital I, that is, to put oneself at the center of knowledge and belief. While we do have an important role to play in both of these, we are certainly too small to be at the center. The issue of what we trust instead of God is a key to understanding our orientation, and its probable insufficiency. If we are interested in changing directions, there are sufficient reasons available to trust God and therefore God can be trusted. We may not get answers to questions that no one has answers for, but we will have answers that lead us to trust. A shift of focus requires an emphasis on what we can know and how we actually live on the basis of this, and this should at least convince us that Capital I is not a legitimate option for knowledge, belief, or life.
Being captive to the ideologies of certainty or uncertainty is like being pulled into a vortex that leads nowhere. Certainty aims to insure us that we have it all together and that everything is straight forward, while uncertainty attempts to illustrate that we don’t have anything together and that nothing is clear. We can become so addicted to polarizations like this, that moving into the middle seems highly unsatisfactory. Withdrawal symptoms are required and sometimes painful, as uncovering that which binds us and leads us astray is so deeply entrenched in every perspective and dimension of our identities. Letting go will be extremely difficult. Release, however, comes from learning to follow in the footsteps of Christ, which is not least to discover the hidden ideological trends and currents in our lives, and in so doing, to open us up to the possibility of a refigured destiny, culminating in a transformation into his image.
