Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Nov 7, 2021

Quotes & Sayings

We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Lions and Lambs - A vision of humanity living together with one another.

Isaiah 11.6-9

6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

9 They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

And the lion shall lay down with the lamb...

by R.E. Slater

When I read verses like Isaiah 11.6ff it tells me that the God of Love who is unwilling to be God without us also urges us to learn to live together in love and kindness towards one another. That we, God's children, are unwilling to be called such if we refuse to love one another.

The biblical hope in Isaiah 11 s for predatory people to stop destroying their fellow vulnerable members. To hold, rather, a vision of living rightly together with one another in supportive communion, grace, forgiveness, mercy, equality, and fairness without slander, harm, gracelessness, thoughtlessness, or hate.

The heavenly communities we envision here on earth must first begin here, on earth, with us, everywhere. Otherwise we have not done our job disobeying Jesus to live peaceably with one another.

And if you think about it, there is no magic formula in heaven which brings people together, as so many people here on earth believe. If Jesus is the magic formula than the possibility of heaven lies also here on earth with us, and it is we, Jesus' followers, who are not allowing this to happen.

So many say, "God wins." Which is not true, God wins ONLY when "Love wins." Otherwise the formula is backwards. Fear, hate, racism, ends when love wins, not God.

God works through us to create the possible. If we refuse then God cannot work. The God of Love is the God of the possible who has enlivened His love in us. Submit, therefore, and be enlivened to God's Spirit of love.

Love is relational. It relates to all things - from earth to people. Live love, be love, seek love-and-reparation with all. Be the lion that humbles itself to live with God's lambs. Those without hope. Of a different color. Who believe differently (not toxically like so much of the Christian religion bent on "overcoming evil with evil").

Be the dove of peace, the sacrificial Lamb of God, the Servant of El Shaddai, who whispers, "Peace be still." God wins when Love wins.

R.E. Slater
November 7, 2021

Other verse references

https://www.openbible.info/topics/lion_and_the_lamb_lay_down_together

The Lion shall lie down with the lamb

https://kingsenglish.info/2011/05/26/the-lion-shall-lie-down-with-the-lamb/

by By Glen on May 26th, 2011

Here’s a phrase that has morphed from it’s biblical origins. Isaiah wrote about “the wolf dwelling with the lamb while the leopard lies down with the kid… and the young lion” (Isaiah 11:6). Yet, as with a phrase like “Pride goeth before a fall." it’s the abbreviation that has survived the test of time: "the lion shall lie down with the lamb."

But however it’s phrased, what could sound more unnatural than a wolf or lion lying down with a lamb?

It’s a vision that has drawn mockery from many quarters:

— “Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn” (Martin Amis)

— “No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is inside.” (D.H. Lawrence)

— “The lion will lay down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” (Woody Allen)

Isaiah has painted a deliberately provocative scene. Nature, as Tennyson reminded us, is red in tooth and claw. How absurd to think that nature itself could be tamed! What could possibly bring about such a cosmic reversal?

Well, as ever, Isaiah answers by pointing us to the Messiah. In the face of warring nations and warring nature, Isaiah continues to set our hope on a miraculous birth. He will be called Immanuel or the Prince of Peace, or here in chapter 11 He’s called “the Branch.”

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; 3 And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: 4 But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5 And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them… 9 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:1-9)

When the true King reigns in righteousness, the world is set to rights. This is not a spiritual truth divorced from historical and physical reality. There will be a day when actual wolves and actual lambs graze together contentedly. When seals will swim happily with great white sharks. When children will play with crocodiles.

Impossible! Ridiculous! Fairytales! you might say. Yet Isaiah refuses to live in a double-decker universe. We often think that Christian truths apply to a spiritual realm while the real business of life occurs on some irredeemable physical level. We might concede that Jesus has spiritual power but, we imagine, it has no bearing on the way of the world.

But Isaiah cannot believe in such a divorce of spiritual and physical. He believes in a very earthy Messiah. He believes in God with us. A God who becomes a Child. A God who really enters into our world – to be born as a human king. The power of heaven will enter into this world from the inside. Not simply to grant spiritual benefits to spiritual people, but to remake His own creation.

We know that the false king, Adam, brought spiritual and physical death. Well then, is Christ less powerful than Adam? Is His victory less decisive than Adam’s fall? No. Therefore Christ, when He comes again, will bring spiritual and physical redemption to the ends of the earth.

The believer in Christ has a physical hope – death defeated, wars vanquished, disease abolished, nature itself brought to peace and prosperity:

6 And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. 7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. 9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. (Isaiah 25:6-9)