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The work of God’s Spirit

This was a post on a blog from earlier this week: Hey Bo!

First, in what ways have you changed the WAY you talk about the Spirit’s work in light of “the 21st century update”? Examples?

Secondly, in what ways do you talk about the Spirit’s work SPECIFICALLY in order for it to be a “subversive danger to the systems of this world” or are these two questions one and the same?

I’d be curious to hear more!

This blog looks great. I, for one, and much more likely to hit it up now that it’s all in one place. It’s a very human thing, but it’s true that we are quite lazy, even in web-browsing! Can’t wait for the return of the POD!

I started to respond but realized that it was far too big a topic for a little reply so it morphed into a whole new post:

There are three big changes:

  1. I got rid of Dualism (like my understanding of  Transcendent and Immanent) that were both unhelpful and antiquated. I had been sold a bad (simplistic) understanding called the 3 tiered universe.  This change is essential to understanding WHAT is happening.
  2. I brought in an understanding of the Trinity called Perichoresis (or Circuminsession) that speaks of HOW it works.
  3. I have adopted a “relational” model (process) that explains WHY the Spirit’s work looks the way it does.

These three changes have revolutionized both my understanding and my practice.

I will give you an example: at church we often open a service by praying and asking God to “come” and we sing songs about the spirit/grace/power/rain coming “down”. We talk about God breaking “in” or breaking “through”.

Now I understand that this is all just language (theo-poetics) that comes from our PERCEPTIONS. That is fine. But God has already come “down” and is already “in”, God has “come” and IS at work among us.  So I don’t get caught up on the imagery – I understand that it is just how we imagine it.

This has then freed me up to stop looking at things in ‘kind’ and see them in ‘degree’. Continue reading “The work of God’s Spirit” →

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>Friday Follow up: Mashing Christmas into Easter

>Just a couple of reflections on this week’s conversations, posts, and emails:

1) The biggest response was to the idea that “Christmas reminds of this every year: live in the place, speak the language, love the people, and show the way.  It’s called incarnation and it is how God works in the world.” I am always intrigued by what draws the most responses and this one really got me thinking. I wrote my Master Thesis on this topic and so it is an everyday aspect of my thought life… but it dawned on me that I have not said or done much here with the idea.  I will have to build this into more of the posts down the road – since it is the thing that I care the most about in real life!

2) Mashing things together is a real problem.  several examples surfaced this week after the Pod was recorded.
– Like saying “worship” and meaning what happens on Sunday morning when we are together and singing.  That is such a shallow definition of worship.
 Worship is a whole life response to God’s gracious love and lordship.  Trees worship on Tuesday nights as much as I do when I sing on Sunday morning. A nursing baby worships in the early hours of morning with her mother – who is also worshipping in the same act of offering. The mechanic worships when he does an honest estimate for a transmission repair.

Thank God for honest mechanics and nursing mothers and trees as the grow toward heaven.

– When we say things like  “God showed up”… I know what we are after but,  it is such a bad understanding!  God was already there and at work long before you showed up , in fact – it might be WHY you showed up.  God was calling.  SO to say that we did this, sang this, prayed this and then God showed up is bad language and worse theology.

3) Incarnation is HOW god works.  I agree with John Cobb when he says : I think that is it a BAD understanding of power to say that God does whatever he wants in the world and however it is is how God wanted it. 

  Saying that the world is the way that God wants it is not true.  God is not that kind of powerful.. God is a different kind of powerful. I say that God is weak. Some people do not like that I say that.
Some say that God self-limits (I get what they are doing with that).
Some say that God is persuasive rather than coercive (I agree).
Others say that God is sovereign like a King is sovereign – unable to control every move and decision of every member of their Kingdom… but in charge of it (I like this).
Still others say that God is storing up his judgment for the End (I worry that they might be disapointed with how gracious God is in the end).

However you come at this, I think you have to admit three things:
a) God does not do whatever God wants
b) The world is not the way that God wants it
c) as Christians, we should look to Jesus as our model when we look at God’s methods

4) This is why I keep saying that it is almost as if Jesus did not come!  When Christian ministers, theologians and lay people talk about power or love – it is almost as if this was done without reading the Gospels of Jesus Christ.  Most of the definitions are about some ancient conception of God or some philosophical assertion about God – but what they clearly are NOT, is reflective of the revelation of God in Jesus.

I know that it is probably too cynical to say that Jesus came into a world where the Powerful reigned, he presented a vision of humility, and then the Powerful co-opted Jesus and went back to being Powerful only now it is in Jesus name.

I look at organized religion and think to myself “it is almost as if Jesus never came”… when you look at Priest centered – Temple worship and then Roman power structures, it is tough to see sometimes what difference Jesus makes.

Sure – the TOPICS are changed and the SUBJECT is different, but the motives, the methods and the models are almost unchanged… but like I said , that is too cynical.

OK  until next Tuesday – I hope that you have a wonderful weekend and I pray that you are safe in your travels this Holiday season!

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>Feedback on the Weakness of God

>Sometimes you have to start in the middle. So here is the definition of the weakness of God that we ‘ended’ up with.
Then we will go back to a few weeks ago when we were working it out.
We will end where we started (the middle) with this definition again
and then I will propose something new for the road ahead !

These are mostly emails conversations that I have gotten permission to use (that is why I changed the identity or location of the writer) the one’s at the end were comments on the website.

here is where we are now

ET
Hey! what about this:

What if every time I said “weakness’ , if I said (in parentheses)
“God’s inverted redefinition of Power we see in Christ – 1 Cor. 1:25)

would that help?

now we go back

Michigan
When I first read your blog my first reaction was to question where God was weak. Personally I don’t like the idea of a weak God, but I came to the conclusion that a being is weak or strong is like to our word for an abstract concept. As you know the Latin/Western world views something as strong only as long as it can conquer something else, creating dominance, and vis versa, the loser is weak. As I read through your paper I can to realize that we I might call strength is not as such. I asked myself if a great strength can be found in adhering to mercy. I think back to Aslan in the Lion, the Witch, and the wardrobe He gives his live for the safety of another. The Lion is taken is what seems to everyone as weakness, but it the action has an inherent strength. All that to say this: what is even though Caputo speak of God as “weak”, what westerns should do is rearrange our definition of strong and weak. If true strength is revealed through weakness then it is in fact strong. Thus if being strong is truly a form of a weak or cowardly mind then it is weak.

Therefore, in my own head, even though Caputo make a case for a weak God, the underlying tone is the God being called weak by western humanity is truly strong than we know. Thus a slight reversal in our names for abstract ideas can change our culture.

I loved the idea of theo-poetics, but I still have a hard time wrestling with Christ as an event of God. I still somewhat see this as a denying that Christ was incarnate. If you wouldn’t mind helping me with that, I would appreciate that. It seems that if Christ is an event of God than Jesus is just a human with a deep connection to God who is still distant, where the classical idea is the God was among us on Earth. I still prefer the later.

Louisiana
I do not have an opinion to share on the weakness of God. From some of the discussion I’ve heard, it sounds like the sticking point is the difference between God being weak, and God choosing to be weak. I would tend to list towards the latter opinion, but again, I haven’t read all of your thoughts on the subject yet.

My question would be, then, how is God redeeming this? Or, how is God trying to work through us to redeem this?

Institutional Christianity is increasingly becoming irrelevant in America; “We are in charge” may be doomed sooner rather than later. It’s mostly the crazy Christians that get TV air-time. I would say this is equivalent to reality TV: institutional Christianity in America is becoming a ridiculous side-show. So maybe you don’t have to be a cynic for too much longer. Maybe the over-the-top caricature of institutional Christianity that seems to get the most media attention is making room for us to provide an ever more striking contrast as an alternative.

Republic of Island
You know, I love the architecture of all the “churches” here, but they are giant imposing reminders of who’s (or who was) in charge.

There are boxes with family names in the older church buildings where the rich folks used to sit (chief seats). I know old folks who won’t go to church because they remember that when they were little, they had to sit in the back while the rich folks sat in front.

There are monuments in church buildings here that praise soldiers who died in service of God and (country) halfway across the world while trying to conquer a foreign people.

80% of our income goes out the door (to the denominational hierarchy). Some of it goes to pay for the upkeep of empty church buildings.

Our denomination has a “Redundant Buildings” Committee.

Here we are at the end of the empire, trying to figure out what’s important. It is an interesting time to be working (in this system).

North Dakota
“The cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God”. For me, the cross really is powerful. Salvation is found in it, healing is found in it. In a profound feat of weakness, defeat, and quiet victory over sin and death, God’s power has been shown to us through the cross. “A bruised reed he did not break, and a flickering candle he did not snuff out”, but in the process, he provided salvation and healing to any and all who would call
on him. Because I am a real Christian, and am against the argument culture of denominationalism/Christian Sectism/Conservative/Liberalism, I REALLY DO THINK GOD IS STRONGER and MORE POWERFUL than anyone in the world. I do not think America is powerful. I think I just have an enlightened perspective:-) Take the way I spend my time: I spend the most amount of my time and energy on those who are on the fringe, annoying to other people, have mental disorders. I do that because I believe that “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick” and Jesus came to call “not the righteous, but the sinners to repentance”. I see the power of God in these conversations/discipleship scenarios. When I hear about a need from someone who will have no way to return the favor, I’m ALL OVER THAT most of the time because I believe that I’m supposed to not
invite those who can’t return the favor to the lavish banquet. I am with Jesus in weak ministry to the weak. I feel God’s presence in it, and in a twist, I see HIS POWER, and the POWER OF HIS CROSS. I just have such a different perspective on power than the world, that I really have come full circle to the point that I see Jesus and the cross as power, and talk-radio/voting/and politics as NOT-POWER. I do understand why you are hitting this thing hard.
I was so mad last week because I met with someone who is a very passionate follower of Christ. My one problem with them, was I was explaining how for us as followers of Jesus, I do not see how we can participate in any military machine. He said, “but in Ecclesiastes it says there is a time for war”. Yeah? Well, it also says there is a time to die. Let me ask you, was death part of God’s original plan? Why the hell did Jesus come anyway? Like you so rightly said it in your PODCAST, we did not learn the lessons from Jesus that we were supposed to, and now we are Spiritually retarded. I mean, if not to revise things, then why did Jesus come at all? Why did he die on the cross? So, I guess I am with you, and I understand your methods of communication. Because I feel the power of the cross in my life, and in the lives of the lowly and weak around me, I have an upside-down opinion on power.

What the heck do we do with the Bible and people’s mis-understanding of it? This is such a bad problem. People think that because something happened in the Old Testament, it’s fair game, and no one seems to understand what Jesus came and did. It seems that people see what GOD did in the Old Testament, then appoint themselves as ‘god’ in the New Covenant. “We can do what GOD did in the Old Testament!!!” No, Jesus modeled for us God’s desire for humanity. READ YOUR bible, and stop ‘cherry-picking’ from the Old Testament. YOU ARE NOT GOD (Romans 8:28-30). Jesus was the “firstborn” among many brothers. That means that everyone after him is supposed to be like him, NOT like GOD in the Old Testament examples, or even like Old Testament
peoples. Please leave being GOD to GOD. Right? Jesus is the firstborn, we are his offspring. We are to “Walk as Jesus did”.

Now that I understand that you are “hitting this thing hard” and that you DO consider Jesus’ healing and such to be powerful, I feel fine. It just seemed like when people asked you about the healing of Jesus, or salvation, or any other displays of power, you defaulted to “God isn’t able to help, God is weak” without explaining his healing and salvation fit. You were trying to keep people from defaulting to Caesar-like America-like power. I get it. For me, it seemed like you were avoiding questions that might challenge your thesis, which I felt was lame. I don’t think so anymore. I see what you’re doing, and I’m cool with it. I think we are actually in agreement about this stuff. The more I consider it and think about it, and read the Scriptures, the more I know what you are saying. The real question is, what is God’s nature? What is God like? We see all the way through the Old Testament God appointing Prophets and Patriarchs to accomplish His will (which didn’t go well, and He didn’t interfere for the most part), then in the New Testament, persecution, the cross, a virtually invisible resurrection from the dead and ascension, then a persecuted, murdered, minority Church to spread the Gospel. You are right that we should heed these stories of what God has done in order to see what God is like in His Nature. One interesting story of Annanias and Saphira (sp?). God put them to death for deceiving, and claiming to give all, but only giving some. Is that God’s holiness or what? Some would read that story and say God was choosing a display of power to make a point about not doing “unholy things” in the presence of “holy God”. Maybe it was just unavoidable because of God’s nature. Whatever. Random thoughts.

I agree with you that God is weak, in that His power is not coercive or dominating. I was just confused by your insistence that he is weak without comment on his power in healing and salvation. I’m still thinking about the idea that God can’t do anything unless through us. Us good protestants say that Jesus is the only way to God, and so we are in essence saying, “God needed a body” to accomplish salvation, even His own body. Interesting stuff, and interesting thought. I know that practically, I live my life like this is true. Even when God does provide for his people, it is through angels, and actions on the part of his people. This does seem to be how God is, what He’s like, and how he carries out his will. Anyway, I get ya that POWER as defined by you is the worlds power of domination and coercion. I was just missing the talk about the power I feel is in the cross. See above for my writing on that.

Delaware
I find the conversation here at Everyday Theology very helpful and incredibly interesting. Before I ask my questions though, let me say, as gently as possible: God is not the author of death. He is not sending anyone a message through the earthquake in Haiti. If there is a spiritual component to this horrible event it originated in Hell, not Heaven. Don’t worry, the Pat Robertsons of the world will continue to marginalize themselves by saying anti-Christian things like his latest, until no one is listening to him anymore.

I do however have a couple of unresolved questions. ET says that this disaster was caused by shifting tectonic plates and unresolved poverty. Yes, this is the vehicle through which death was delivered. But I do believe that there is a spiritual component to this event. I am not sure what it is, but I suspect it has something to do with Satan’s desire to kill, steal and destroy and my failure as a follower of Jesus to bring redemption to the people of Haiti. Is there a spiritual component to this disaster?

Second question: While Jesus displayed a glaring lack of human power he did display an incredible amount of heaven’s power (healing sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead and so forth). While the weakness of Jesus has got me thinking about what the Gospel really is and how it is totally and utterly opposed to empire, I still see a power offered to his disciples that inserted the impossible into human tragedy. Where does this authority over sickness and death fit in this emerging theology?

ET
Wow. you have quickly gotten to the heart of the matter. I really like what you said in your first paragraph. Powerful statements.

First question: I can only tell you what I think. I think that the tectonic plates are ‘natural’ in origin. I think that the systemic poverty is ‘human’ in origin. and I think that IF there is anything ‘spiritual’ that it is people’s response to tragedy and hurt. Christ’s body reaching out, holding the hurting, healing wounds and reaching into the wound.

second question – this is a tough one. I want to believe. I do not want to be a cynic. If we have the power to raise people from the dead and heal the sick, why are we not flying ‘miracle teams’ over there to raise the dead and heal the sick? IF EVER we were going to step up into an ACTS like authority and take ‘dominion’ (as someone else has said) then THIS would certainly be the time do that!! The world is watching – it would be publicized on GLOBAL TV. The world would SEE and BELIEVE.

please understand me. I have seen miracles. I believe. I just don’t know that it is predictable enough to ‘go public’ with it. I think that we 1) show up 2) love without condition or judgment 3) serve 4) pray and see what happens. That really is the best I have right now. I mean, if you feel called to get on an airplane and fly down … or better yet – just pray from where you are that the dead in Haiti will get up and start to tell of God and his power, you can do that right now.

I am just saying that I do not think that is that way it works. I think that God is weak. I think that God loves weakness. I think that God works in our weakness. That is why I think we go (in weakness) and serve (in our weakness) and embrace others weakness and that is how God is made manifest, in our weakness.

Ike in Bosnia
Hello Everyday,

Wow, lots of good stuff to chew on.

I’m still do not agree that if we say to the people of Haiti, “God is weak” that that is somehow a more palatable, 21st-century message. Likewise, if we say, “Good news Haiti, God is in control” I don’t believe that it is outdated, nor that it is proven wrong by present facts and reality.

We do have to wrestle with pain and death in this world. We can make the world a better place but we cannot make it a perfect place without pain and death. And there is a reason for that. God is in the process of redemption but has not completed it yet.

Why is it that when human suffering was commonplace and taken for granted it was OK to say that God is almighty. Now, however, we can’t say that because it doesn’t fit our context?

You once indirectly criticized a preacher for refusing to believe in a Jesus who could be beat up. That concept of Jesus just didn’t fit with what he decided was right or proper. But at the same time I’m hearing that we cannot believe in a strong God because it doesn’t fit 21 century concepts of what is real or works or is proper?

When did we, the citizens of the 21st century, decide how God should be? And when did God say, “Oh, you’re right. I have to change myself to fit your your conceptions of me?”

I think one amazing point of the incarnation, the manger and the cross is that God did things his way in a manner that didn’t fit the preconceived notions of the day.

Then by the resurrection God showed strength in the midst of weakness. God will do the same in our weakness. As we are weak, God is strong and proves that God is faithful to those who have that trust.

At some point we must all wrestle with the true God, as is. I am created, God is creator. Somehow I feel we are getting this backwards.

ET
Ike – You know how much I like you! And how much your contribution here means to me. So I am not saying this to you per se but just throwing it ‘out there’.

When we say that “God is in control” what does that mean? To the people of Haiti does that mean anything? In the Balkan Wars when Catholic Croats, Serbian Orthodox Christians and Bosnian Muslims were raping and killing each other… in what way was God in control?

I am not sure that God is in control. I am growing to believe that God is a weak.

The first objection someone makes is to say ‘ God isn’t weak, in the Old Testament…” but that raises a whole new set of questions.

-Is that God dead? I mean, why doesn’t that stuff happen now?
– If he’s that strong and he doesn’t do anything, maybe he doesn’t care. I mean if you’re telling me that he’s strong then maybe he’s not as loving as we’ve been told.
– Is it possible that the ancient Hebrews were mistaken and YHWH isn’t the King of Heaven (God most High) like they thought and was, in actuality, a regional Deity and we have outgrown his power?

Maybe it would be best if people didn’t just tell me how ancient societies conceived of their God. I am asking a real question: what if God is weak? What if the explanation of the evil in the world isn’t Theodicy or Sovereignty or any of the constructs of the past? Maybe we have conceived of God wrongly and God isn’t who we were told he was. If Jesus is God ( which is what I believe) then maybe HE should be a lens by which we can evaluate what happens in history.

The difference between me and the bully preacher from Seattle is that I am not saying that if God isn’t who I thought he was that I won’t worship him. What I am saying is that maybe God has shown who he is and we have chosen to stick with a previously conceived notion that is far more fantasy and façade than revelation.

What ever God turns out to be, I will worship. I’m not telling God who God has to be. I am asking what if God isn’t who we told that God was.
I am looking at who God has revealed God’s self to be in Christ and in history — and I’m wondering if God is really weak and it is WE who will not accept that.

ET
Hey! what about this:

What if every time I said “weakness’ , if I said (in parentheses)
“God’s inverted redefinition of Power we see in Christ – 1 Cor. 1:25)

would that help?

that is where we find ourself in this conversation

Here is something to power us on the road ahead:

I am presenting the New Testament as a “poetics” of the kingdom of God, a theo-poetics — as opposed to a “theo-logic”, an ethics, or a church dogmatics — as a complex of narratives, parables, and paradoxes of which Jesus is the centerpiece. From a work such as that cannot simply and straightforwardly “derived” a course of action. We need instead to “arrive” at an instantiation, a concretization, a way to translate it into existence, all the while letting it happen (arriver) to us, allowing ourselves to come under its spell and be transformed by the event it harbors. For that we require a delicate style of interpretation, a “hermeneutics”…
– John Caputo

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>The deal with reading the Bible

>Sorry for the giant delay in posting these here. I will be moving all of them over this week so that they are synced with the website. http://www.everydaytheology.net

3 things in this one: how NOT to read it, WHAT you are reading, and HOW to read it

You can’t read it like a contract.

– By His stripes we are healed.
– The Lord is my shepherd , I shall not want
– Every knee will bow and every tongue confess
– If you confess your mouth and believe in your heart- you will be saved.

We live just after a time (Modernity) where language was viewed a certain way and texts were treated accordingly. The problem is that the Bible was not written in that same period or mindset so … when we use that Modern approach there can be a bit of a gap between what it originally meant and how we read it.

Let’s look at Psalm 23 and specifically just the first line. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. Well, the problem is that believers in every place in all times have been in want. Does that mean that God is not holding up his end of the deal? Is God breaking the contract? No. You can’t read the Bible that way. God is not actually a shepherd and you will not actually never be in want. You can’t read it like a contract.

A lot of people though – have been taught to read it like a contract. We use this Modern sense of language and say that each word and each phrase is an exact representation of it’s greater reality. That it exactly represents what it is talking about.

But this leads to some pretty complicated situations. Like when Paul says ‘God exalted his name – so that at his name every knee with will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.’ I am not sure that Paul was saying that at some point in history or after human history that every knee will bow. I am not sure that is the point of his writing that. But when we read it like a contract, we say “It says EVERY… in plain black and white – EVERY”. So then we develop elaborate constructs and scenarios where by God can uphold his end of the bargain and live up to his end of the deal. But I am not sure that it works like that.

People do this with Old Testament prophecies and say “It says that by his stripes we ARE healed – not ‘will be’ or ‘might be’ – we ARE.” As if this in an exact 1:1 equation. “God said, I believe it, that settles it”. But I am not sure that it was meant to work like that. And when it doesn’t…. well then we say ‘Maybe it’s you! Maybe you don’t have enough faith or maybe you have unconfessed sin or maybe your just not one of the elect who is meant to get it.’ You can not read the Bible like a constitution.

Like when Paul says ‘if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart you will be saved’. But then there are all these other expectations and other times he says ‘if you hold fast to the faith’ as if it were conditional. A lot of time and energy has been spent to try an explain the formula for salvation. The requirements to fulfill the contract. But I am trying to say that you can’t read the letters of Paul like a contract – dissecting each phrase, parsing each clause of the contract.

Just like we have to be careful with Enlightenment individualism and consumer spirituality , we have careful of this view of language and texts. They need to be interpreted through the lens that they were written in.

What is Hermeneutics ?

The definition is simply the study of different ways that texts are interpreted. It looks at the relationship between the author , the text and the reader. Many christian that I have met and talked to have never heard of this word. That really piqued my interest so I looked into it. It turns out that many Christians do not know that there are different ways of looking at a text. Many believers do not know that they are interpreting. I have been told over and over again “I just read the Bible literally”

I said before [link] that no one reads the Bible literally. Even if they say they do, a simple couple of questions and that gets exposed.

All texts need to be interpreted. Some as Poetry, some as history, some as parable, some as prophecy , some as Apocalypse, etc.

So this is why I wanted to bring it up. If we are all interpreting but we don’t acknowledge that we are interpreting… then it is either happening sub-consciously or we are so comfortable with our interpretive devices that it is happening by default or we are deceiving ourselves insisting that nothing is going on but a plain reading of the text.

You have to factor in TheoPoetics

Sometimes we just need to factor in that there are ways we talk about God. This is just a natural implication of using language to do something as amazing and vast at trying to describe transcendent reality and mystical experience.

It could be something as simple as when a child says ‘Jesus lives in my heart’. That is theopoetics. It’s simply the way we talk about God. It doesn’t need to be critiqued and measured in a exacting way. We know that the resurrected Christ didn’t shrink down and multiply himself then move into each person’s cardiac valve. It is a way of talking about God. It’s how we use language.

When Jesus says ‘on this rock I will build my church’ he was not speaking about a piece of granite nor of building a church building. It is a way of talking. The thing is – and this is important – I am not being dismissive by saying this as if the use of poetics means that things don’t carry weight or that they ultimately don’t mean anything.

Jesus was saying that there is something that is foundational and that he is responsible for the activity and entity that is called the church.

When the child says “Jesus lives in my heart” , just because it doesn’t mean that the actual Jesus doesn’t live in her actual heart, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything. She is talking about the Spirit of Christ indwelling that central place of passion and purpose. That means something! It’s just that the language in inexact. But this is the nature of language.

Actually – this is not a problem at all. If we give each other space and grace and acknowledge that hermeneutics and theopoetics play a role in our religious life and use of the Bible. The problem comes when we think and demand that language work a different way. When we insist that language be exacting and mathematical (this word = this exact definition) we get frustrated like the Pharisees did with Jesus as they demanded specifics and he told them stories!

“Who is my neighbor – the guy two doors down or three doors down?” he was asked. That reminds me of a story about a Samaritan… “When exactly do you rise up and restore Israel as a King?” he was asked. The Farmer sows seed…

Even when Jesus did use numbers he used them with a certain amount of absurdum or hyperbole. “How may times should I forgive my brother – 3 or 4? I mean I can’t just let him walk all over me and do the same thing over and over.” Jesus could have done the clever Rabbinic thing and added the two together and said 7. And that would have been unimaginable and challenging for them! That would have been surprising and prodigal (extravagant). But he does something incredible – he doesn’t just go up incrementally with addition – he goes exponential with multiplication! 70 times 7 !

This understanding of theopoetics is helpful to me. So that when Jesus says ‘if a part of your body causes you to stumble, cut it off.’ Just because he doesn’t mean ‘CUT IT OFF’ doesn’t mean that he doesn’t mean anything.

Just because a beast with 10 heads does not rise up out of the sea literally – doesn’t mean that the passage doesn’t mean anything!

Just because God isn’t actually a shepherd – doesn’t mean that God isn’t LIKE a shepherd. This is the same for ‘Father’ or ‘Rock’ or that ‘he hinds me under his wings’. These are Theopetics. They are the way that we talk about God. It is not exacting language, it is not mathematical or representative. It is expressive. It is expressing something deeper.

That is why I don’t get to hung up on Jesus saying ‘this is my body and this is my blood’. Like if I hold up a picture and say that ‘this is my wife’. It is not actually my wife. It is not representative – it is reflective. It reflects her. Now by saying this I am not saying that the ‘Lord’s Supper’ , just because the bread is not actually his flesh and the cup does not literally contain his blood, that it does not mean anything. It means something. But that something requires interpretation.

Like a child saying ‘Jesus lives in my heart’ – just because it doesn’t mean that literally doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything. It means a lot! It is deep and profound … and that is why we use Theopoetics.

For the Podcast of this click [here]

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