Reflection week 8 Wed
One of the challenges that we have, and should embrace, is that we represent the other. We are the y to God’s x. So often we see ourselves in relation to the world around us and we forget that we should be looking at ourselves in relation to God. The comment that the answer to WWJD about the Church being the Church is a challenge that can never be met, not that it shouldn’t be engaged. God is the ultimate undeconstructable playing out through the world in the now and the not yet of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If we ever deem ourselves the x to the worlds y we are cosmically screwed, we will have lost touch with the need to ask the question to which the answer is “Jesus”.
Bevens Ch 8
I may not have understood it perfectly, but the fourth foundation stone that the transcendental model rests on seems flawed. No doubt there are similarities in the human mind’s cognitive function regardless of culture and time, but to say that “it is the same” seems unrealistic. I recently took a Myers-Briggs test and found that I placed in a category that makes up about 1% of the population. This may be more of a personality test, but its mechanics reveal the differences in how people think, which I’m guessing transcend culture and time. If this is true, does it reveal a fatal flaw in the transcendental model or just an issue to be aware of?
“The ordinary Christian believer is a theologian” I believe is a true statement. As they interact with God within the unique aspects of their environment and experiences each believer does participate in theology, it’s just that they may not be right (this is also true of trained theologians). Paul’s interaction with the Corinthians is a prime example. Was God present? Yes. Were they reacting, interacting, and thinking about God? Yes. Was having sex with your father’s wife a good thing? No! Theology is not just about right answers, it is a search for understanding and an expression of identity, but at the same time, no amount of “feeling” is going to change the fact that 2+2=4. There are still principles and basic truths that underline God’s interaction with us. We may not know all of them, but they do exist.
Cobb Ch 8
Looking at confession in religion is critical to understanding how we interact with sin. A Muslim world view doesn’t account for guilt the same way that a Western one does. Confession is a sign of weakness in honor/shame societies and is not respected at all, yet in Western culture confession is respected because it reveals personal accountability and an owning of a wrong. We want closure and for things to fit. We want to know who is responsible so we know who can be punished, penitentials are one of our constructs that brings closure to the structure that has grown out of our Western myth. The question is, in bringing “sin” and its consequences under the covering of our own myth, have we fled from God’s perspective?
Week 8 Monday
Myth as logic is a helpful concept to work with. Interacting with people from different cultures it becomes clear that ‘logic’ and ‘common sense’ are not universal. Knowing that the differences exist and knowing that they are connected to cultural perspectives is useful but incomplete information. Seeing that Myths are fundamental in the formation of logic provides a starting point, both in confronting foreign and domestic concepts of logic when they distract from the logic and nature of the gospel.
Response to Joe
I liked what Joe had to say on Barker and politics. I don’t know where the majority/minority lines are drawn in christian relations with the political, but I think it’s clear that there are many different groups and subgroups, once more, I think that the best way to claim power over naming and deciding issues is in acting. I agree with what most of the Religious Right believes, I just wish that they would shut up and realize that being ‘right’ isn’t the point, and that in the grand scheme of things, American politics just doesn’t matter that much (that’s not to say it doesn’t matter at all). It’s in action and practice that Jesus impacted his community and it is in action and practice that we have the greatest opportunity to impact ours.
Bevens Ch 7
The Synthetic model is the most useful one yet. I think that on the surface this is because it picks and chooses from the other models as needed and in a demand driven culture who doesn’t like a salad bar mentality. On a deeper level I like it because it places the emphasis on the gospel/Jesus, with point the being the effect rather than abidance to a model. In a world infested with type A’s it is easy to become program/model/rule oriented and become so focused on doing thigs ‘right’ that you lose sight of what matters. I think that the Praxis model avoids this to an extent, but even then it doesnt seem to embrace the rich resources that it has available to it.
Week 7 Wed
The Praxis model was a bit easier to work out than I thought it was going to be. I think the challenging aspect of the model is embracing a commitment that enables the initial action yet at the same time being flexible enough with ‘your baby’ to let it be evaluated and rebuilt in an image you didn’t first intend. It seems that the underlying commitment must be to the gospel/Jesus, after that the results drive the action. This creates an odd state of holding on and letting go at the same time.
Week 7 Monday
Gotta say that the first half of the class was wiped out in my joy of not having to small-gorup the Praxis model. After that, the language stuff was cool. The concept of language as a tool, and each community developing its own interpretations fell into sync with some of my experiences in other countries. Just because they speak the same language doesn’t mean they speak the same language. Communicating with someone in Africa who has grown up speaking English can be almost as difficult as trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English, if only because you don’t fall into the trap of preconceived understandings.
Cobb Ch 7
The differences between the Jeremiad and the Gothic perspectives on the brokenness of the world are difficult to consolidate, but I believe that that is just what needs to be done. In interacting with younger people today there is a clear trend towards the Gothic perspective, the problem with this is that it doesn’t provide any hope for the future or positive expectation of change. In its intellectual divorce from an active God and resentment towards the hand it has been dealt, the Goth perspective divides and breaks community. On the flip side, the Jeremiad perspective doesn’t account for the accepted reality that regardless of our own actions, “shit happens”. This raises issues of Theodocy which I believe fire a great part of the Gothic conviction. The question is, can the two perspectives be mixed together bringing out only the good in both viewpoints?
