Emerging Women

1. What does it mean to live biblically?

A.J. Jacobs shares the insight he gets on biblical interpretation from Steven Greenberg, the first out-of-the-closet gay orthodox Jewish Rabbi:

“The whole Bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man,” says Greenberg. “God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are lways two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways…Never blame a text from the Bible for your behavior. It’s irresponsible. Anybody who says X,Y and Z is in the bible — it’s as if one says, ‘I have no role in evaluating this.’”

2. What ways have you experienced a happy cooperation between mind and Spirit in the Word coming to life for you?

3. Have you ever used “the bible says…” as a cop out when you didn’t actually believe what you were saying?

4. What, in your opinion is the healthiest way we can approach biblical texts with which our spirits deep down cannot agree, at least in terms of a traditional interpretation of the passage?

by A.J. Jacobs

“My quest is this: to live the ultimate biblical life. Or more precisely, to follow the bible as literally as possible.” So begins A.J.’s year-long sojourn, which he has made into a funny, informative and thought-provoking book. You can learn how You too can live biblically, see before and after pics of A.J’s hair (see if you agree he resembles the unibomber,) and view a link on How to be good at at A.J’s website.

At the project’s start, A.J. decides to get himself some good biblical studies resources. Upon walking into a Bible bookstore, a sales clerk offers A.J. some advice, as he points to a suggested bible, which is, “designed to look exactly like a Seventeen magazine: An attractive (if long-sleeved) model graces the front, next to cover lines like, ‘What’s your spiritual IQ?” Open it up and you’ll find sidebars such as ‘Rebeca the Control Freak.’”

“This one’s good if you’re on the subway and are too embarrassed to be seen reading the Bible,’ says Chris, [the sales clerk] It’s an odd and poignant selling point. You know your in a secular city when it’s considered more acceptable for a grown man to read a teen girl’s magazine than the Bible.” (p 9)

This interchange caused me to think about this quandry/opportunity:

1. What does it mean to be unapologetic and open about our humble walk with God when so often we feel ashamed and very apologetic about certain aspects of our religious “families of origin.” and the dogmas that often supplant life in the Spirit? What can we claim from our origins that abides in light, love and truth in place within our spirits where deep calls unot deep? And what could it look like when we let that Light shine?

On page 39 A.J. writes:

…one of my motivations for this experiment is my recent entrance into fatherhood. I’m constantly worried about my son’s ethical education. I don’t want him to swim in a soup of moral relativism. I don’t trust. I have such a worldview, and though I have yet to commit a major felony, it seems dangerous.

I thought it was funny to observe that A.J. actually agrees with fundamentalists about relativism, even though this is the view he espouses. I wondered,

2. Is there an alternative to relativism and absolutism?

3. Have you wrestled with “what to tell the children,” either in your family or spiritual community? I am curious particularly in areas of sex, salvation and evangelism how your own journey/ambiguity or ambivalence impacts what you say, avoid saying or otherwise communicate to a younger generation.

4. What approach do you take to instilling, offering, modeling and otherwise helping nurture young disciples, whether they are your own children or spiritual children you feel are entrusted into your care in friendship and/or ministry?

In my ministry / relational interactions . . .” on the street” research lately I have been running into a lot more wafer thin theology among devote Christians. (Like if you poke a stick at it, (MAYBE) it could collapse like a bubble gum bubble.) For instance, one guy… I’ll call him Bazooka Joe, explained that experience precedes (or overshadows) theology. For his faith walk with Jesus this is the deal. No distinction could be made for anybody’s experience in a spiritual sense, good or bad. He didn’t want to determine what that was, b/c who’s to say? It becomes individual, if not almost arbitrary to sort that out, he seemed to think.

I thought about this, but then something didn’t seem to quite fit, so we interacted a bit him more. When I asked him about his conversion from atheism, and if that experience would then have more weight, he admitted, logically it couldn’t, of course, based on what he said, and what he believed to be accurate about experience.
So experience is. . .well, not like Theology.

How does Theology fit into experience, and experience into Theology?
or for you, does one inform the other?
how?
discuss. . . .
: )

Well, one problem with being a book lover and the mom of a toddler is that books suddenly disappear when you are about use them, and so this post isn’t going to have any quotes. I hope if you’ve had a chance to dip into the book you’ve found some gems of your own, and please feel free to share any that inspire you!

In the latter part of the book, Karol talks about the breakup of the old order, with its imposition of sameness, at the cost of individuality and the voices of the sisters. She describes the crisis of community that occurred when after years of oppression, the freedom to dissent suddenly arose, causing the foundations of friendship, sisterhood and solidarity to be shaken, and the cost both of that oppression, and the pain of its lifting after being normative for so long.

1. Where is your community at in the process of valuing the voicing of its members, even when it means the loss of uniformity?

2. What is your community doing or not doing to foster an environment where people are/feel loved and safe enough to stretch beyond comfort zones to include the Other, even when the other is the person in the next seat or pew?

3. Describe a time you took a risk and voiced a dissenting opinion about theology, community or spiritual life? What was it like?

4. Describe a time you did not voice a dissenting a opinion, but felt one? What was it like?

5. Describe a time when someone else’s dissenting opinion felt threatening to you? What was it like?

6. What is your heart’s urgent prayer for the church/God’s people?

One of the main themes that emerges in this book is the issue of blind obedience. We have suffered so much for being/not being blindly obedient to our churches, to theologies, to authorities who come in the name of God, be they spiritual or political. I love Sister Karol’s voice because she offers a third way: that of sensing the voice of God in our authorities and in ourselves, our peers and those whom we influence as authorities.

Karol Jackowski writes,

“It’s not that I didn’t believe sister Beatrice’s [her superior] voice was the of God — I did. But I also believed that we too speak with the voice of God, and listening to what we had to say was an important part of being obedient.” (p 149)

And,

“Nothing is more deadly to the holy spirit of community that silencing the divine voice of i
ts members, because it’s then that we silence the voice of God.” (p150)

1. What has been your experience with blind obedience?

A. Are you by nature a white sheep who tends to follow blindly, even to the slaughter?
B. Are you a black sheep who tends to buck anything that smells faintly like authority?

2. What ideas do you have for how we can listen to the voice of God in all people? What practices and methods of discernment help root you and your community, if you have on, in the Spirit as you seek to listen to the voice of God in authority, in yourself and in all who travel side by side or in your care on the path?

At what point does doubt slide into some form of agnosticism or deism? Is it possible to be a Christian if you’re not even sure if God exists?

I ask because I’m becoming less and less certain of my beliefs. Most days, I’m relatively sure that there is *something* out there…but not always. And often I can’t say whether that *something* is God as we think of him/her. I just don’t know. Strangely, this isn’t a disturbing thing to me in most situations. Although it can become a little awkward when other Christians attempt to convince me of X by pointing out bible verses or saying, “the church teaches….”

To me, those sort of arguments are beginning to make about as much sense as attempting to prove that Santa exists because his name was on some of the presents under Johnny and Sarah’s Christmas tree last December.

On page 110, Volf states based the human tendency to commit injustice, we have two unacceptable options:

“We can simpy disregard justice (as Nietzche did) and abandon the world to the interplay of forces, thus plunging the unprotected weak into suffering; or we can insist on the relentless pursuit of justice and end up with a “rectified” world-in-ruins, a world completely torn apart by the unsparing hands of retributive justice.”

The third option (drum roll for this big shocker, please) is forgiveness. Volf writes,

“In the memory of the Passion we honor victims even while extending grace to perpetrators. shouldering the wrongdoing done to sufferers, God identifies it truthfully and condemns it justly.”

Although Volf argues for an ultimate healing where offenses no longer comes to mind because love has entirely suffused and reconciled the human community with one another in and with God, he is careful to point out that “one should never demand of the those who have suffered wrong that they “forget” and move on….Any forgetting other than that which grows out of a healed relationship between the wrongdoer and the wronged in a transformed social environment should be mistrusted.”

Clearly this works for catastrophic and clear cut wrongs, but what about the smaller offenses where perceptions plays a huge role not only in memory but in interpretation?

I’ve thought of this idea recently and wondered, since God *could* forgive without the cross, because God is God, if part of the atonement is to both honor the victim by validating the inexcusability of the wrongdoing, while offering grace to the one who does wrong. And in situations where memories differ and it’s a game of he said, she said, then if God in Jesus died for ALL sin, God covers whoever *deserved* (from our human standpoint) punishment, and we all are called to show grace to ourselves and one another, even when we disagree about who was wrong, who was more wrong etc.

1. Is there a sense in which, in God you can either be right or your can be happy (because God in Christ has made all things right)?

2. What criteria do you use to decide what truths/memories are worth fighting for and what can be let go and healed by a general appropriation of the Passion with its grace and its humbling effect on all people?

On page 171 Volf analyzes Kierkegaard’s depiction of three women abandoned by their lovers, who act as forgiving as a good Christian possibly could, yet remain largely unhealed and despairing. The women are un-liberated by their forgiving actions because “the bond between the lover and the beloved is ‘an alliance of self-love that shuts God out.’ As a result of this selfish idolatry, the self of each woman is left unprotected and subject to the mercy of her fickle lover.”

3. In what situations have you deluded yourself into thinking you were selflessly loving another but in actuality you were putting a human love ahead of keeping your ultimate identity in God, to your own detriment?