Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Living Spiritual Rhythms - December 28
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Thursday Thoughts - December 22
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Only 2 left. Now just 2.26 pounds = around $3 on amazon.uk!
Beware!
That
pesky serpent in the Genesis Garden outwits humans. Indeed, this even looks like
a set-up. They didn’t have a chance. As if that weren’t enough, the veracity of
evolution challenges literal readings of the Eden story. If you’re interested
in our take on all this, check out From
Evolution to Eden. Making Sense of Early Genesis.
Living Spiritual Rhythms - December 21
The systems we set up to meet our own standards never
work for establishing a healthy identity. They are insufficient and potentially
corrosive. Our hope of achieving an “OK” self if we “did that” and therefore
“do this” will fail. True, there may be a place for standards in life, but they
can’t be the ground of who we perceive ourselves to be. The problem is that the
“did that” and “do this” won’t give us what we long for – an ability to accept
ourselves because of who we are and in spite of who we’re not. If we are to
avoid a collapse into a vicious circle of self-affirmation or condemnation, we
need to embrace the living tension between freedom and responsibility founded
on several informers, including: nature, humanity, and the biblical text, which
all promote the view that our value, dignity, and worth are “already there” and
thus not something that we earn by measuring up to self-made standards.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Reflection for the Week - December 19
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,
that moving into the middle seems highly unsatisfactory. Letting go of poles may
be extremely difficult. Yet, we must be willing to go through the necessary and
sometimes painful withdrawal symptoms as we uncover that which leads us astray,
deeply entrenched, as it were, in every perspective and dimension of our
identities. Release gradually comes from learning to follow in the footsteps of
Christ, which is not least to begin to discover the false ideological trends
and currents in our lives, and in so doing, to open us up to the possibility of
a refigured destiny, culminating in transformation.
The Apostle Paul. Culture & Theology
There
is a fair amount of discussion going on today about the apostle Paul and the
various cultural and theological influences being discovered in his letters. I’m
pleased to have reviewed Paul’s
Graeco-Roman Context – Peeters: 2015, Breytenbach, ed., which addresses
several of the key issues. Outstanding contribution. Brilliant book!
https://www.amazon.com/Graeco-Roman-Bibliotheca-Ephemeridum-Theologicarum-Lovaniensium/dp/9042932716/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482144798&sr=8-1&keywords=paul%27s+graeco+roman+context
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