I wonder if perhaps the time has come to discard anthropomorphism in favor of light. Bishops John Shelby Spong and John A.T. Robinson have popularized the deconstruction of the antiquated, anachronistic, and anthropomorphic images of God. Those metaphors are well past their sell-by dates.
Whatever message you heard, it probably emphasized taking a day off. But such sermons betray the fact that the vast majority of us have been taught to read the biblical text through the eyes of those who are economically privileged.
The Dalai Lama, as part of an interview, remarks about the ways that the conflict between the scientific and religious worldview simply isn’t an issue
Again, people, a satire. But a telling one.
When we lose sight of the provisional nature of our paradigms and begin to think of them as timeless and immutable, we can become reactive when faced with new experiences that don’t fit our old way of thinking. We may be tempted to deny them. We may be suspicious of anomalous observations that threaten the old way of seeing things, or of the motives of those who bring them to our attention.
What I take away from Niehbuhr is the fundamental conviction that there is no culture that either has, does, or will embody the Gospel teachings. Just as all humans sin and fall short of God’s loving hope for us, our cultures will as well. A true proclamation of the Gospel must always and inevitably include a condemnation for the ways that the Gospel is perverted in that culture.
The group’s decision to use “higher power” and “God of your understanding” instead of “God” or “Jesus Christ” and to adopt a more inclusive tone was enormously important in making the deeply spiritual text accessible to the non-religious and non-Christian, AA historians and treatment experts say.
. . . fidelity is breached long before physical acts occur. How about looking at an ex’s profile pictures and imagining the life you could have had together, the children you could have been raising, the house you could have bought?
Dr. Stanley Hauerwas: “In truth, I have only come recently to understand that what I have been doing for many years has been teaching people how to talk.”
“A persecution complex is not a healthy thing. A mantra among Christian academics is that if your work is rejected, assume it was because it is not good enough.”