Admitting that there isn’t total truth will not lead to total relativism. Neither are plausible options. What’s true and what’s relative would seem to have to be considered by degrees, not totalities.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thursday Thought – November 28
Some things can’t be mediated, but where possible and mediation brings us closer to truth than leaving us further away from it, let’s do it.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 27
The incisive depiction of self-deception found in the biblical text is striking. We are never the selves we simply assume ourselves to be. Consequently, self-designation for good or ill is severely limited, leaving us adrift in a sea of questionable options. There can be no doubt about it – we are in need of more - being and becoming new selves. Receiving the gift of a new self anchored in a call from beyond generated by the love of the Infinite One, deconstructs the death force of manipulative power strategies and sets us on the pathway to life with all its detours and complexities. Vistas of past, present, and future now opened up along the journey are breathtaking, as time and story coalesce and separate on the glistening horizon of the Divine promise of redemption.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Reflection for the Week – November 25
Grace, Grace, Superabundant Grace. I’m thankful I can trust that God will remember me. I leave my destiny to his imaginative impulse of resurrection.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Friday Musings–November 22
Self-knowledge is often viewed as the need to recognize a total dependence on God. I’m not even sure what a total dependence on God might look like, and if I did, it doesn’t seem like it would essentially have any bearing on several dimensions of self-knowledge.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Thursday Thought – November 21
To come to a better understanding of self-knowledge means recognizing that a key feature of knowing oneself is a participation in being known.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 20
Total self-control or total God dependence are not realistic options for life. Totalities are just out of the question. We lack access. Rather, it seems to me that God challenges us to be “dependently independent.” This blended configuration has to be worked out, but it gives us an opportunity to be the creatures he intended us to be, instead of violating ourselves, others, or God through totalizing illusions.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Reflection for the Week–November 18
If the biblical text is not historical in certain places, this is not necessarily a loss of revelatory value. The text has to be taken and read genre by genre. There may be a marked difference, for example, between Genesis 1-3 and the Gospels, though the Gospels may not in every instance be loaded with a historical impulse for them to be packed with sufficiently true testimonies that radiate revelation. A careful reading of the biblical informer then is not an all or nothing enterprise, but an engaging with and being engaged by various interpreted expressions, facts, and stories that God participates in configuring, so that we might be called out of darkness and into light.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Friday Musings–November 15
Beyond the fleeting idolatrous deceptions of the metanarratives of absolutism and relativism, lies the steadfast truth of the Crucified and Risen One.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Thursday Thought–November 14
The quest for independence and neutrality with respect to knowledge is idolatry. It de-humanizes us. To be human is to interpret and be interpreted by.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 13
At the emergence of creation, God is depicted as the Divine Transcendent One, who imminently orchestrates a symphony of words. These words become vehicles for creating something aesthetically marvelous and intricately complex, though not free of risk. Creation is a wild and diverse marvel, a purposefully directed wonder. God is the Speaking Sculptor who declares and it unfolds. This God, the Genesis God, is the God who sees, names, replies to, and proclaims that his creation is good for its purpose.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Reflection for the Week–November 11
I would assume that a trust and suspicion dialogue would need to be in place for not only assessing what’s true, but for decoding how to interact with God, self, other, and world in some type of related and distinct manner.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 6
Imagination is an essential of life and a pathway to the discovery of truth, wherever it is to be found. Reason, sense observation, feeling, and our experience all suffer severe impoverishment without the recognition that imagination is the lynch pin that makes each of them possible and holds them together in a related, yet distinct manner. To be sure, knowing the revealing God, and being in community with him, is a possibility that becomes much more of an accessible reality in and through imagination.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Reflection for the Week–November 4
People often say, “If I was born somewhere else, I would believe something else.” This implies that context is determinative for belief. While there is a degree of truth to this, it is a reductionistic subterfuge. Context does play a role in belief, but so do many other features of being in the world. Things are really much more complex, when it comes to belief. Surely, we in the West are more prone to illegitimate context transfer. That is, we desire to suspend belief because it might be different if we were in another context. This is a charade. To imagine that we were born somewhere else would mean to imagine that we are not who we are. We might attempt this, but we will never escape ourselves. Dealing with the matters of the context we are actually living in the midst of, therefore, will be the appropriate trajectory for coming to grips with legitimate belief.
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