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

Friday, May 15, 2015

A Contemporary Translation of the Prophecy of Amos


artwork by John Jude Palancar


The Prophecy of Amos, Revised
https://defeatingthedragons.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/the-prophecy-of-amos-revised/

by Samantha Field

Note: what appears in this post isn’t intended to be a translation– it’s a reaction to the words of Amos as I read them in English in the NIV, ESV, King James, and the Message. It’s an interpretation based on trying to find modern meaning and truth in an ancient text. Also, I am aware of the problems of taking passages that apply to ancient Israel and forcing them onto modern-day America.

Daniel Kirk - God and the Gay Christian (a short list of related articles)




J. R. Daniel Kirk
Associate Professor of New Testament
School of Theology
Fuller Theological Seminary

Education
BA, University of North Carolina
MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary
PhD, Duke University


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A Short List of Related Articles on

GOD and the GAY CHRISTIAN

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *




Over the past few weeks I have been taking occasional soundings into questions surrounding homosexuality in the ancient world. Just to clarify what has not been clear to some: it is obvious to me that Paul did not approve of (some sort of) same-sex coupling. The question I have been probing is what did he...




As Christians try to figure out what it looks like to respond in continuity with our ancient tradition to same-sex attraction, relationships, and questions of what is appropriate physical intimacy, one looming question is this: Did Paul know of homosexual relationships such as those that some Christians are committing themselves to in our day and...




What was the sexual climate of the first century Mediterranean, and how does that help us to understand what the New Testament is talking about? That’s a question that runs right through the middle of many conversations about sexuality in the church, and about homosexuality in the church in particular. One line of argument is...




On Sunday Ken Wilson gave a sermon at City Church San Francisco called “The Unique Tenacity of Christian Community.” A friend of mine called it, “Best sermon ever on LGBT inclusion without mentioning LGBT once.” You can listen and judge for yourself. Yesterday I interacted with one part of the sermon that resonated deeply with...




When City Church in San Francisco announced that it was altering its policies with regard to the inclusion of LGBTQ folks, they indicated that an important voice guiding them forward was that of Ken Wilson, founding pastor of the Ann Arbor Vineyard Church. Yesterday Wilson preached at City Church, part of an ongoing conversation about...




A few weeks ago, City Church in San Francisco announced its decision to become a “third way” church with respect to the issue of homosexual practice: a church where there could be divergence of opinion and practice (life-long abstaining or life-long commitment to a single partner), but where all would be treated as equal members...




My friend Tim Otto wants to talk about orientation. And he wants to talk about gay people in the church. But the orientation he wants to address is not sexual orientation. He wants to talk about the need we all have, across the board, to be Oriented to Faith. Do we need yet another book...




Matthew Vines is out to show that the Christian case in favor of same-sex relationships is not the exclusive purview of the liberals. As an Evangelical, who seems to me to hold a view of scripture that is something akin to inerrancy, Vines writes God and the Gay Christian in order to establish what he...


What Matters Most to People Around the World



A map of what matters most to people around the world
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/infographic-what-matters-most-to-people-around-the-world-2015-04-29?link=sfmw_fb

by Shawn Langlois
April 29, 2015

Life satisfaction is the top priority in the United States

Here in the U.S., life satisfaction tops the list. Education is the priority in South America. And in the gilded streets of Monaco, safety is apparently on the minds of monied locals. Those are just some of the takeaways from a recent blog post.

More than 60,000 people from over 180 countries were polled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and their responses were turned into an infographic (see below) by MoveHub.com. The OECD has been putting this data together for its Better Life Index since 2011 and it updates these figures daily.

Other observations include the fact that health, understandably, matters most to a huge portion of the globe, while Australia appears to be the only developed country where work-life balance is the focus. Elsewhere, the environment isn’t concern number one for all that many countries, but, for whatever reason, it is in Slovenia and Georgia.


Topics













Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Err of Protecting Theological Systems Vs. Updating Out-of-Date Theologies


11 recurring mistakes in the debate over the “historical Adam.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/05/11-recurring-mistakes-in-the-debate-over-the-historical-adam/

by Peter Enns
May 11, 2015

I began getting seriously involved in the Christianity/evolution “controversy” in 2009, which led to my 2012 book The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins.

The debate over the historical Adam continues in an entirely predictable manner: the theological needs of the evangelical system lead to patterns of responses that are aimed at protecting that system rather than addressing the serious theological issues introduced by evolutionary science and modern biblical scholarship on Genesis.

Below are the 11 patterns (“recurring mistakes”) I see, though others could be added, I’m sure. They are in no particular order.


1. It’s all about the authority of the Bible.

I can understand why this claim might have rhetorical effect, but this issue is not about biblical authority. It’s about how the Bible is to be interpreted. It’s about hermeneutics.

It’s always about hermeneutics.

I know that in some circles “hermeneutics” is code for “let’s find a way to get out of the plain meaning of the text.” But even a so-called “plain” or “literal” reading of the Bible is a hermeneutic—an approach to interpretation.

Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (even if implicit) as much as any other approach, and so needs to be defended as much as any other. Literalism is not the default godly way to read the Bible that preserves biblical authority. It is not the “normal” way of reading the Bible that gets a free pass while all others must face the bar of judgment.

So, when someone says, “I don’t read Genesis 1-3 as historical events, and here are the reasons why,” that person is not “denying biblical authority.” That person may be wrong [in your mind], but that would have to be judged on some basis other than the ultimate conversation-stopper, “You’re denying biblical authority.

The Bible is not just “there.” It has to be interpreted. The issue is which interpretations are more defensible than others. Hence, appealing to biblical authority does not tell us how to interpret the Bible. That requires a lot more work. It always has.

“Biblical authority” is a predisposition to the text. It is not a hermeneutic.


2. You’re giving science more authority than the Bible.

This, too, may have some rhetorical effect, but it misses the point.

To say that science gives us a more accurate understanding of human origins than the Bible is not putting science “over” the Bible—unless we assume that the Bible is prepared to give us scientific information.

There are numerous compelling reasons to think that Genesis is not prepared to provide such information—namely the fact that Genesis was written at least 2500 years ago by-and-for people, who, to state the obvious, were not thinking in modern scientific terms.

One might respond, “But Genesis was inspired by God, and so needs to be true.”

That assertion assumes that “truth” is essentially synonymous with historical accuracy and that a text inspired by God in antiquity would, by virtue of its being the word of God, need to give scientific rather than ancient accounts of origins.

These assumptions would need to be vigorously defended, not merely asserted as unimpeachable fact.

Lying behind this error in thinking is the unstated assumption that the Bible, as the word of God, must predetermine the conclusions that scientific investigations can arrive at on any subject matter the Bible addresses.

To make this assumption is to run roughshod not only over commonsense, but over the very notion of the contextual and historically conditioned nature of Scripture.

If Scripture were truly given priority over science in matters open to scientific inquiry, the church would have never gotten past Galileo’s discovery that the earth revolves around the sun.


3. But the church has never questioned the historicity of Adam.

This claim is largely true—though it obscures the symbolic value especially early interpreters found in the Garden story, but I digress.

On the whole, this statement is correct. It is also irrelevant.

Knowing what the history of the church has thought about Adam is not an argument for Adam’s historicity, as some seem to think, since the history of the church did not have evolution or any scientific discoveries to deal with until recently.

That’s the whole point of this debate—evolution and ancient texts that put the biblical story in its cultural context are new factors we have to address.

Appealing to periods in church history before these things were on the table as authoritative and determinative voices in the discussion simply makes no sense. What Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and the Puritans assumed about human origins is not relevant—and to say so is not a dismissal of the study of church history, historical theology, etc., but to put them in their place.

Calling upon church history does not solve the problem; it simply restates it. Appealing to church history does not end the discussion; it just reminds us why we need to have the discussion in the first place.


4. Both Paul and the writer of Genesis thought Adam was a real person, the first man. Denying the historicity of Adam means you think you know better than the biblical writers.

More rhetorical punch, but this assertion simply sidesteps a fundamental interpretive challenge all of us need to address on one level or another.

All biblical writers were limited by their culture and time in how they viewed the physical world around them. This is hardly a novel notion of inspiration, and premodern theologians from Augustine to Calvin were quite adamant about the point.

No responsible doctrine of inspiration can deny that the biblical authors were thoroughly encultured, ancient people, who spoke as ancient people. Inspiration does not cancel out their “historical particularity,” no matter how inconvenient.

Any notion of inspiration must embrace and engage the notion that God, by his Spirit, speaks within ancient categories.

We do indeed “know more” than the biblical writers about some things. That alone isn’t an alarming theological problem in prciniple. But that principle has become a problem because it now touches on an issue that some feel is of paramount theological importance—the historical Adam.

The stakes have been raised in ways no one expected, for now we understand that the ancient biblical authors’ understanding of human origins is also part of their ancient way of thinking.

Should the principle be abandoned when it becomes theologically uncomfortable?

As I see it, the whole discussion is over how our “knowing more” about human origins can be in conversation with the biblical theological metanarrative. This is the pressing theological challenge before us and it needs to be addressed deliberately and without rancor, not avoided or obscured.

Acknowledging that we know more than biblical writers about certain things is not to disrespect Scripture. We are merely recognizing that the good and wise God had far less difficulty condescending to ancient categories of thinking than some seem to be comfortable with.


5. Genesis as whole, including the Adam story, is a historical narrative and therefore demands to be taken as an historical account.

It is a common, but nevertheless erroneous, assumption that Genesis, as a “historical narrative,” narrates history.

Typically the argument is mounted on two related fronts:

(1) Genesis mentions by name people and places; we are told that people are doing things and going places. That sounds like a sequence of events, and therefore should be taken as “historical.”

(2) Genesis uses a particular Hebrew verbal form (waw "consecutive plus imperfect") that is used throughout Old Testament narratives to present a string of events—"so-and-so did this, then this, then went there and said this, then went there and did that."

As the argument goes, we are bound to conclude that a story that presents people doing things in a sequence is an indication that we are dealing with history. [in actuality, the narrator of the story is following an ancient cultural form of story telling within his/her society whose storyline contents may, or may not be true, perhaps embellished, symbolic, or any number of literary forms - re slater]

That may be the case, but the sequencing of events in a story alone does not in-and-of itself imply historicity. Every story, whether real or imagined, has people doing things in sequences of events.

This does not mean that Genesis can’t be a historical narrative. It only means that the fact that Genesis presents people doing things in sequence is not the reason for drawing that conclusion.

[As example,] The Lord of the Rings [written by JRR Tolkien] masterfully records in great and vivid detail people (and others) doing things in sequence. But is it still pure fiction. A Tale of Two Cities [by Charles Dickens] does the same, but that doesn’t make it a reliable guide to historical events.

The connection between Genesis and history is a complicated, multifaceted issue that many have pondered in great depth. The issue certainly cannot be settled simply by reading the text of Genesis and observing that people do things in time[ful sequences].


6. Evolution is a different “religion” (i.e., “naturalism” or “Darwinism”) and therefore hostile to Christianity.

Certainly for some evolution functions as a different “religion,” hostile to Christianity or any believe in a world beyond the material and random chance.

But that does not mean that all those who hold to evolution as the true explanation of human origins think of evolution as a religion. Nor does it mean that evolutionary theory requires one to adopt an atheistic “naturalistic” or “Darwinistic” worldview. [please understand that Darwin was a Christian and that his system understood God to have created through the mediating process of evolution rather than the immediacy of an instantaneous creation as imposed by biblical creationists. To say "Darwinism" is an atheistic system is a misnomer. It can be taken as this by non-Christians but it may also be understood as a Christian re-statement or re-assessment of the creational process used by God. - re slater]

Christian evolutionists do not see their work in evolutionary science as spiritual adultery. Christian evolutionists take it as a matter of deep faith that evolution is God’sway of creating, the intricacies of which we cannot (ever) be fully comprehend.

In other words, “evolution=naturalistic atheism,” although rhetorically appealing, does not describe Christians who hold to evolution. Their convictions should be taken at face value, rather than suggesting that they have been duped or are compromising their faith Christians.


7. Since Adam is necessary for the Christian faith, we know evolution can’t be true.

Evolution causes theological problems for Christianity. There is no question of that. We cannot simply graft evolution onto evangelical theology and claim that we have reconciled Christianity and evolution.

The theological and philosophical problems for the Christian faith that evolution brings to the table are hardly superficial. They require much thought and a multi-disciplinary effort to work through. For example:

  • Is death a natural part of life or unnatural (is it a punishment of God for disobedience?)
  • What does it mean to be human and made in God’s image?
  • What kind of God creates a process where the fittest survive?
  • How can God hold people responsible for their sin if there was no first trespass by a first human couple?

A literal, historical, Adam answers these and other questions. Without an Adam, we are left to find other answers. Nothing is gained by papering over this dilemma. [assuming the former, Relevancy22 has spent the past four years examining in what other ways these questions might be answered rather than through the standard classic portrayal of them. Certainly the classic answers are the easiest to be grasped by the common non-scientific man; but this doesn't make those standard replys accurate. Nor true. Just a continuance of the Christian mythology concerning the nature of death. And by stating "mythology" this does not in anyway remove the idea of "sin" from the Christian vernacular of theology. No, it simply says that on scientific grounds the Christian story needs to be extended as to its accuracy for a technologically scientific society. - re slater]

But, here is my point: The fact that evolution causes theological problems does not mean evolution is wrong. It means we have theological problems.

Normally, we all know that we cannot judge if something is true on the basis of whether that truth is disruptive to us. We know it is wrong to assume one’s position and then evaluate data on the basis of that predetermined conclusion.

We are also normally very quick to point out this logical fallacy in others. If an atheist would defend his/her own belief system by saying, “I reject this datum because it does not fit my way of thinking,” we would be quick to pounce.

The truth of a historical Adam is not judged by how necessary such an Adam appears to be for theology. The proper response to evolution is to work through the theological challenges it presents (as many theologians and philosophers are doing), not dismiss the challenge itself.


8. Science is changing, therefore it’s all up for grabs.

Science is a self-critical entity, and so it should not surprise us to see developments, even paradigm shifts, in the near and distant future.

Is the universe expanding or oscillating? Are there multiple universes? How many dimensions are there? What about dark matter and dark energy? How many hominids constituted the gene pool from which all alive today have descended? And so forth.

But the fact that science is a changing discipline does not mean that all evolutionary theory is hanging on by a thread, ready to be dismissed at the next turn.

Also, the fact that science is self-correcting doesn’t mean that, if we hold on long enough, sooner or later, the changing nature of science will eventually disprove evolution and vindicate a literal view of Genesis.

Change, development, even paradigm shifts in scientific work, are sure to come, and to point that out is hardly a penetrating insight: that is how science works. But further discoveries will take us forward, not backward.


9. There are scientists who question evolution, and this establishes the credibility of the biblical view of human origins.

Individual, creative, innovative thinking often leads to true advances in the human intellectual drama. I would say that without these pioneering voices pushing the boundaries of knowledge, there would be no progress.

However, the presence of minority voices in and of itself does not constitute a counterargument to evolution.

Particularly in the age of the Internet, it is not hard at all to find someone with a Ph.D. in a relevant field who lends a countervoice to mainstream thinking. This is true in the sciences, in biblical studies, and in any academic field.

One can always find someone out there who thinks he or she has cracked the code, hidden to most others, and disproved the majority. And, in my experience, too often the promotion of minority voices is laced with a fair dose of conspiracy theory, where the claim is made that one’s view has been ostracized simply because it challenges the establishment.

Those without training in the relevant fields are particularly susceptible to following a minority voice if it confirms their own thinking. But simply having a Ph.D., having research experience, or even having written papers on minority positions, does not establishe the credibility of minority positions.

The truthfulness of minority claims must be tested over time by a body of peers, not simply accepted because those claims exist and affirm our own positions.


10. Evidence for and against evolution is open to all and can be assessed by anyone.

Since evolutionary theory is the product of scientific investigation, it follows that those best suited to evaluate the scientific data and arguments are those trained in the relevant sciences—or better those who are practicing scientists and therefore are keeping up with developments.

The years of training and experience required of those who work in fields that touch on evolution rules out of bounds the views of those who lack such training.

This is certainly the case with those who have no scientific training whatsoever beyond basic high school and college courses. I certainly fall into that category, which is why I don’t feel I can enter into scientific discussions, let alone critique them.

Engaging scientific issues requires serious scientific training—which only a fraction of the earth’s population can claim to have.

My point is that most of us do not have a place at the table where the assessment of evidence is the topic of discussion. I include here philosophers of science, historians of science, and sociologists of science. These disciplines look at the human and historical conditions within which scientific work takes place, this giving us the big picture of what is happening behind the scenes intellectually and culturally.

Science is not a “neutral” endeavor, and these fields are invaluable for putting science into a broader intellectual context. I am all for it.

But I have often seen practitioners of these disciplines, without any high-level scientific training, overstep their boundaries by passing judgment on evolution on the basis of the big-picture context these disciplines provide.

Evolution cannot be judged from 30,000 feet. You still have to deal with the scientific data in detail.

I think I stand on very solid ground when I say that these various disciples need to be in conversation with each other, not one standing in judgment over the other.

Simply put, you have to know what you are talking about if you want to debunk evolution. If you want to take on the scientific consensus, you have to argue better science that stands the test of peer review, not better ideology.


11. Believing in evolution means giving up your evangelical identity.

Many arguments I have heard against evolution come down to this: my evangelical ecclesiastical group has never accepted it, and so, to remain in this group, I am bound to reject it too.

It is rarely stated quite this bluntly, but that’s the bottom line.

But, as is well known, in recent decades the term “evangelical” has become a moving target. Is evangelicalism a stable, unchanging movement, or is it flexible enough to be open to substantive change?

Or an even more fundamental consideration: should maintaining evangelical identity at all costs even be the primary concern?

These may be the most important questions for evangelicals to consider when entering into the discussion over the historical Adam.


*This list is an edited collection of a four-part series that I posted in 2011. - Peter Enns


Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 - Jesus




What is Radical Christianity?

So what is Radical Christianity? At its core, in its simplest and most sublime form, it is Jesus. One's entire theology, dogma, religion, beliefs, ethics, and morality is centered upon Jesus who becomes both the foundation stone and builder upon whom we build out God's kingdom in as many ways as there are people and talents, dreams and hopes.

It is to Jesus whom we bow and must submit the philosophy's of our day to His holy person. Whether it be our personal philosophies held in religious folklores. Our enculturated philosophies of existential dialectic (how we would interpret the world around us). Our societal philosophies of global communication, trade, and common effort. Even our ideas of our self and our identity of who we are before God. Everything, and in every way, must be submitted to Jesus as the Master Builder of our lives, our families, our businesses, our communities, our nations, and our world.


What Do You Want?

Jesus Calls the First Disciples (ESV)

35 The next day again John [the Baptizer] was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he ([John]) looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.[h] 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus[i] was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). 42 He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter[j]).

In John chapter 1 Jesus asks John the Baptizer's disciples a question, "What are you seeking"? Or, asked another way, "What do you want?" This is the sublime question of any man or woman. "What do we want?" At once Jesus shows a rude insightfulness into the lives of His new adopted followers that borders on a personal invasiveness to all that they believe they are in their identity and commitments of themselves to the gospel of God. And rightly so. Especially for the servant of the Lord. And so Jesus asks, "What do you want!?"

So too with us when we come to Jesus in God's Word: "What do I want!? What do I wish to get out of this Jesus-thing?" Or, thought of in another way, we might diagram Jesus' statement in three different ways:
  1. You are what you love.
  2. You might not love what you think you love.
  3. You make what you think you love into what you think you want.
Each of these statements are a truth to themselves. The first asks us "What is our core identity?" Not what do you know, nor what do you believe, but what do you most want our of life.

Statement 1 - "You are what you love."

God has made us as lovers and so it is natural to ask "What do you love?" as Jesus does here in John 1. What is your deepest longings? Your greatest desires? What drives you when you get up in the morning?

We're not talking about agape love (selfless love) but eros love (fleshly, guttural love). This is how God made us. Desire is not a bad thing though it can become a bad thing when used in a wrong way. Hence the question, "What do you most desire, crave, yearn for? What makes you get up in the morning?"

Statement 2 - "You are what you love but you might not love what you think."

What if there is a gap between the answers to the questions we have versus the deepest part of our being which unconsciously hungers for the things we don't know or don't realize we carry within us?

For example, imagine if there was a magical room that you could enter that could  give you not what you thought you wanted but what you really wanted. Would you enter it? Would you take the risk to enter this magical, all-knowing room?

Or, like many, would you hesitate? Would you reconsider your first impulsive to go into this room for fear of discovering something you really hadn't thought about before. Because, quite naturally, what we thought we wanted is not actually what we really wanted all along. Just some facsimile of what we thought we wanted all along. And if what we really wanted turns out quite differently from what we thought we wanted we could be in for quite a little disappointment, or shock, or even dismay!

So what does this mean? Simply, Jesus is "the room." Jesus is the one who will transfer your desires from what you think you want to what you truly want in a process known as "conformity." A process that teaches us to unlearn our first desires of ourselves so that we might discover our heart's greatest desires. It's deepest cravings. It's most powerful longings.

It is the process of discerning who we are and not what we think we are.


Statement 3 - "You make what you think you love into what you think you want."

This latter idea is known as our "rival story of ourselves." That is, it is the lies and delusions we tell ourselves all the time - and then re-inforce them in some narcisstic or harmful way. And let us not count out all the legalisms and self-righteous works we use to tell God just how good-and-valuable we are to Him! Sure, we can blame our actions on the devil or on others or evil but in truth, it is us. It is us telling ourselves a rival story to the real story that lingers in our heart but cannot get out.

What is the solution? To discover ourselves and our rival stories so that they might be re-framed into a truer story of ourselves within the story of Jesus. The better, more conflicted story in which He asks us the dreaded question, "What do you really want from Me?"

It is here where the work of the Holy Spirit comes to us through the story of Jesus and into the stories of ourselves to help us begin to chisel away all the false images of our delusions down into the bedrock of our deepest desires we keep hidden far, far away from ourselves.

Neither the "Christian faith" per se, nor "a belief in God," is the answer here. In point of fact there are many Christian men and women who have hidden from themselves - and Jesus' studied question - by taking on the false imagery of conformity which is more me-lead than Spirit-lead. A false image where we hide ourselves even deeper from the God by telling ourselves we are closer to God because we are doing all the right things, thinking all the right thoughts, believing all the right messages. To this Jesus asks, "What do you want!?" 

This is the Jesus who loves us through our "good" works, penance, and absolutions. Who sees us beyond the fig leaves we have stitched for ourselves. Who walks with us in patience and faithfulness as we wander and bobble about in our lives like toy boats on the waves of life as we try to figure out who we are and what we really want.

The Truer Story of Us

Nay, our story isn't so much about what we are doing but what God is doing in our lives. He, who is the shaper and molder of our lives-and-dreams-and hopes into the identity of ourselves freed from the former self to the transformed self. What Paul calls the "new man" that casts away the "old man."

Yes, even in this new spiritual version of ourselves we can "make what we think we want" from it. But the real trick is to learn to listen to the Spirit and to be willing to move through the process of self-discovery at His pace and not our own. To relax in the providence of God and let life happen as we steer our course through its turbulences.

The image of God within our breast is a deep thing. Far deeper than we know. Not only has God made us to be lovers but He has made us to be makers. We are natural born creators as God's image bearers. Ultimately we are in the process of being re-created by the Holy Spirit as God's image bearers. To be involved in this task and confident that with humility and grace we might survive its chaffings and tortured route.


Our Commission and Mission

And what is this image-bearing-thing that we possess? To re-create God's world in all the vocational, recreational, and personal things that we do in this life now by His love. Whether we can ever discover our deeper selves truly, or not, the simplest thing we can do is to bear God's image of love to the loveless, the forlorn, the unempowered, the overlooked, the condemned, and despised.

By this activity we discover ourselves by discovering the image of Jesus indwelling our hearts. We come to the identity of ourselves by unlocking all the potentiality of God's creation to become what it can become by God's Spirit. To translate the story of us into the story of the world. And by that translation release the rival story of ourselves from our hearts into the truer story of ourselves in Jesus.

This is our narrative ultimately. Not of us - but of losing ourselves into God's greater story which frees us from ourselves to release the burden of our creative, loving being upon a world locked in sin and woe.

Ultimately the Christian story is the Jesus story of unleashing God's image through us as His image bearers. And to not worry about all the psychological mumble-jumble of "desires, and cravings, and guilts, and penances." But to love as Jesus loved. This is our commission and mission.


Go Unpack All that I have Made for you

We are the recipients then of a Jesus message that is both a blessing and a necessity. Jesus' story doesn't end in His resurrection but begins with His ascension to become what He truly was on earth. To unpack all that He had created in His lifetime even as we are to enact it by unpacking His truths of love and witness, fellowship and forgiveness.

Like the centripetal force of the centrifuge which gathers in the liquid solvents of the science lab Jesus becomes the gathering force which spins us into Himself as the real center of the world against all the lies and delusions it tells us. So that in the process we might be separated from our former selves into the purer form of our new selves in Christ by His Spirit.

This is the process of transformation by conformity and when done spins us outwards into the world when released from the grip of the devices holding us from breaking out. It is through the process of worshipping together each week that the church is called out to break out during its weekday lives as a commissioned body propelled to missionize our communities by the simple acts of repentance, conformity, and transformation.

There is no real mystery to Jesus. There is no deeper philosophy than God's Spirit. It is the language of love that is the greatest reformer to the world's deepest needs and darkest delusions. And it is the language of conformity to Jesus who spoke in the simplest, but most sublime terms, when saying, "Learn to love. And when loving then do what you will." 

If you love rightly you will do precisely what God's will is by being in His will. This is the radicalness of a Radical Christianity. It begins with Jesus and is sewn through-and-through by Jesus even unto its ends. A Radical Christianity takes its postmodern faith and hermeneutic and re-captivates its message with the person and work and love of Jesus.

Whether we understand ourselves or not. Or this world or not, in all its "velocities of self-implosion" and "accelerations away from itself," to the lies and delusions it holds in front of us as the truer false-paths of self-discovery. No, the power, the source, the engine to all of this is Jesus. Without Jesus there can be no discovery. No release. No truth or fulfillment. Just endless, empty strivings after the winds of our own demise and misplaced stories that we tell ourselves.



The Little Prince

There is a story out there that says "If you want to build a ship than teach people to long for the sea." Not how to build a ship, or to go through the mechanics of building a ship, or even attend apprenticeship classes around the marine industry. No, the truer story is to long for the immensity of the sea. To long for its endless bounty recreated upon every new sunrise as it embeds itself into all that it is from day after day after day until the last dawn of all new mornings.

It is in the story of longing that we may act out the story of us that we don't even realize we are acting out. For it is not a story that we may simply read of - we must become active participants in it. Mark Twain, the great American literarist once said, "He who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can in no other way be taught." So too with Christianity.

It is not enough to read of it, to study and dissect it theologically. It must be lived. Experienced. Used and witnessed to by our very selves as the actors upon God's lively stage.

We attend the communal practice of Christian worship with the mindset that we are to burst from this Sunday assemblies into the worlds we live to really want what God wanted us to want and not the unleafed pages of unlived lives unsullied from trying, failing, or attempting to live life by God's grace and Spirit.

This is the truer story of us. It is the story of Jesus within the greater story of God. It is the truer narrative of who we are in Jesus. We have become the "little prince of our story' who sails around the world dauntless of its fears, ceaselessly yearning for adventure and discovery. To become one with the horizons of our lives lived too meanly upon the leaden pages of our rival stories of ourselves. Lost on the wings of the wind until Jesus came into our lives to become the captain of our ships and the Lover of our souls. He, who is the Lord of creation and the God of our imaginations. Praise ye the Lord.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
May 13, 2015