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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 8:57 PM (GMT -6) |   | Okay I only got to one of your seven points and I meant to get to all of them but my internet fast put this on hold. Here goes nothing…
Modes:
quote:
2. Related to the above argument is the application of Paul’s categories of strong and weak to this conversation. The strong here would presumably be your more liberated view of reading the verses spiritually even when the texts do not encourage it. The “weak” view is that these texts actually are referring mainly to who they seem to be referring, that is those corresponding to the OT widows and orphans, beggars, etc. as a person in the “strong” position, it would seem prudent to AT LEAST not be so bold as to TEACH such a position, for as a Christian matures to your stature they will surely come to see that the physically comfortable but psychologically disenfranchised are the “true” widows and orphans of today. Truly the Lord would not blame me for serving the obviously poor! I gather this much from the prophets and Christ himself. But one takes a risk to do any less, or even any other, according to MANY important passages, though one may be guilty of literalism to read them thus.
You’re right, I can’t blame you for taking these passages to be about widows who actually lost husbands and orphans who actually are fatherless (not to mention motherless!). This is how I take them as well. But all of these passages I believe fall under Paul’s truth that, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3). What are we ‘saving’ widows and orphans for if not to love and to be loved? I am objecting to mere physical survival as the only necessary end in a warfare view of poverty. We, like Ani Difranco, have better things to do than survive.
What about the children whose parents are alive but their parents remain fundamentally absent from their lives? What about the women whose husbands don’t give them the time of day? Are we to say “sorry kid, you’d qualify if your folks were dead, but since their not your disqualified, you're not really poor”?
This is why, I believe, Mother Teresa tried (perhaps in vain) to pull off a preemptive strike on poverty. She always insisted that love must begin at home. “Let us begin with our family, with our closest neighbors. It is difficult. But that is were our work begins.” (Mother Teresa, No Greater Love. page 56.) If we see the poor in our families and serve them and meet their many and desperate needs their in the home they would not end up in Mother Teresa’s homes. I must qualify this to say that many who did end up in here homes did have families who loved them but simply could not meet their needs. But sadly she ran into her fair share of abandoned peoples, untouchable even to their own families.
The reason why I think her preemptive strike was to a large degree ineffective is that her true power laid in the testimony of her actions. She could actively love the physically poor by meeting their needs, but she could only plead with weaker words for others to serve in the more difficult invisible poverty. I think I’ve already quoted this but its worth putting up again,
quote:
In every country there are poor, on certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life…It is too easy simply to talk or concern ourselves with the poor who are far away. It is much harder and, perhaps, more challenging to turn our attention and concern toward the poor who live right next door to us.
When I pick up a hungry person form the streets, I give him rice and bred, and I have satisfied that hunger. But a person which is shut out, feels unwanted by society, unloved and terrified – how much more difficult is it to remove that hunger?
You in the West have the spiritually poorest of the poor much more than you have the physically poor. Often among the rich are very spiritually poor people. I find it is easy to give a plate of rice to a hungry person, to furnish a bed to a person who has no bed, but to console or to remove the bitterness, anger, and loneliness that comes from being spiritually deprived, that takes a long time.
Note especially that what Mother is trying to say is that spiritual poverty is more difficult than physical poverty. I am not so much trying to elevate the spiritual as the ‘true’ poverty, rather I’m trying to highlight that witch is a) invisible and therefore often ignored all together, and b) in reality a much more difficult poverty to meet, in this way it may be correct to say it would almost be easier if we could transform spiritual poverty into physical poverty because then it would make it so much simpler to deal with, diagnose, and war against.
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 9:08 PM (GMT -6) | | Modes:
quote:
3. Relating both of these above arguments to the developmental actuality of a Christian is equally important: our image of perfection starts in our imagination. Even when our image of perfection is of the perfect person, Jesus Christ, and we know cognitively that Christ suffered, we have not yet perfect knowledge of this reality. Or even of what it means to be a Christian, yet. Christ, the perfect and the good, came into our sin-ridden world. This logically entailed the degree of suffering that corresponds to the good subjecting itself to the evil. As we identify ourselves with Christ, we become ONE with the Good through our baptism. This puts us in a parallel place to Christ’s. We too will start out with the ideal, the vision, the mission, to be a Christian (Christ’s vision of course was as the Messiah, but the parallel holds) but we have not yet LIVED this in actuality. Our concrete participation in these notions IN ACTUALITY (as opposed to in conversations like this) is what draws us closer (subjectively speaking) to Christ all throughout our lives. We suffer as Christ might have in each circumstance that we are faithful to our Lord. Just look at who Christ CHOSE to hang out with! Yes, he spoke to the rich young man, and what did he tell him? Back to my main point, regardless of whether there is a “sense” in which what you are arguing for is “true” or not is quite irrelevant. Mother Teresa can say so because she was successful in becoming and being a Christian all her life! Her knowledge is validated by her obedience and her wisdom is her own. WE CANNOT pick up where she left off! Rather we too must learn obedience and longsuffering through trials as she did and as Christ promised and Paul experienced, along with the millions of saints otherwise. Wisdom is not borrowed but earned. If we revere Mother Teresa, let us not be satisfied to talk like she talked but let us walk like she walked. I think we’ll agree here, but there is more at stake…
We do agree here. The only point I might qualify is the idea of picking “up where she [Mother Teresa] left off.” I don’t see looking for spiritual poverty as picking up where she left off; rather this looking for and warring against spiritual poverty should be included with the concrete actions of Mother we are to emulate. It’s not as if I’m tagging this element on to her ministry. Just look at her life, look at her own words about her life and you will see that they already are to be found there. One might even argue this was the primary core of her ministry to which attacking physical poverty was only a part but not the end. If we are to learn from, follow, and live Mother’s life we must include this aspect of her ministry.
into physical poverty because then it would make it so much simpler to deal with, diagnose, and war against.
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 10:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Okay I might have to bust this one up to respond to it.
Modes:
quote:
4. There is a serious problem exegetically with the arguments you defend. While I revere Teresa as a true saint of God, this does not make her teachings infallible, though perhaps her LIFE was nearly infallible! If we say that we, and those like us, are the true poor, poorer than the physically poor, in fact we are the true widows and orphans…then God was deeply confused when God exiled the Israelites for their treatment of the physically poor, and punished Israel for neglecting the years of Jubilee! How terribly misleading! Israel themselves, those who were the slave owners and landlords and so forth…didn’t God know yet that THEY are the really poor? The psychologically traumatized? There is so much stress involved in being rich! How pitiable to be so lonely! God have you no mercy on their suffering?!
Oh come on now Modes, unless I have been grossly misunderstood this whole time you should be able to see that I’m not advocating abandoning the physically poor to take care of ourselves and wallow in our own self-pity. I never said that God was trying to mislead us by calling our attention to gross injustices. I’m merely questioning what is left over once these injustices are set right. Even if everyone on the planet went to sleep with full bellies in warm beds tonight the question still remains unanswered: “why get up in the morning anyway.” I firmly believe that unless we can answer that question we won’t be able to give meaning to Charity (wow if any word has ever been emptied of its true meaning its been this one) that seeks to feed bellies and house the homeless.
Modes:
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No! There must be continuity from Old to New. You would have to have such a supercessionsitic view that the Old Testament would be virtually useless when it comes to the really important and “truly spiritual” things in life. A quick read through the book of Amos would strongly challenge your “spiritually” poor theory. A scan of the psalms shows that there are many who are spiritually poor, but they can only worry about being spiritually poor if they can survive from one day to the next. The dignity of humanity is predicated upon their living above the hand-to-mouth status of animals.
I’m not arguing an all or nothing approach here. You make it sound as if I’m saying “Ah Ha! Now that I’ve found the ‘truly’ spiritually poor I don’t have to bother with all the starvation or bodily suffering in the world anymore.”
Modes:
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Your comments about ministering to the physically poor being easier causes me to question the extent of your experience in such contexts. Perhaps there are subjective preferences for who to minister, but I would not ever say that spending extended time in an undeveloped country, or in our urban city centers, is “easier” than dealing with people with less concrete issues! The measurements for success are surely different, and the results vary and so forth, but this is a strange claim to make. It seems to further my suspicion that your spiritualizing the poor is dangerous indeed.
I readily admit that my experience and time in undeveloped countries is limited but in my defence let me say a few things.
1. First I’m fairly young, I would like to think that for a kid my age I have had more experience in these areas than the average population.
2. Second, my thoughts are in process. I ask God and you for the grace to not be held to any of my current positions. If God can change his mind, and if we are created in his image, I sure as heaven am going to take advantage of my right to abandon my ideas when stronger ones come along. I’ve already gone trough a number of dialectical turns on this issue and I expect to go through a number more.
3. Third, my experience is limited but it is not non-existent. A short resume: my first experience with abject physical poverty came four years ago when I went to Haiti and saw the Sisters of Charity and their work. It radically changed everything I’ve ever seen or touched since. Since then I’ve been back to Haiti four more times for various lengths of time, however, none have been longer than a month and a half. On two occasions I’ve been able to walk through city sole (sp?) the slums of Port au Prince and the poorest square mile in the Western Hemisphere. I’ve been able to see both urban and rural poverty in both Haiti, the US (urban only), and Indonesia. I spent a semester studding community development and anthropology among other things on the island of New Guinea living and studding among tribes that were considered “Stone Age” as late as the mid 1960’s. How long does extended need to be in order to count as extended? (BTW how many miles must a man walk down…) Would a four months living with tribes 30-years-post-Stone Age wearing flee collars to keep from getting bitten in grass huts count? For the past four years I’ve been volunteering (when I’ve been in MN) at a homeless shelter in Minneapolis. Recently I’ve been taking the first steps to open up the route to possibly (I give it about a 40% shot realistically) joining Mother Teresa’s order and spending the rest of my life wherever they put me, most likely beginning in Skid Row in L.A. and then moving on to India and then elsewhere.
4. I understand that I can’t even justify my own existence let alone can I justify my actions within my being.
5. At any rate they are Mother Teresa’s words that carry more authority then mine and I think she, if anyone, should meet your criteria for extended stays in undeveloped countries.
I can understand the confusion about ‘easier’ and ‘harder’. As I contemplate joining Mother’s order I’m staggered by the difficulty of their work. I truly believe it is the hardest work in the world, and realistically, I’m not sure if I could do it. But the difficulty of their work comes in the backbreaking variety. They are working far from their homes, with limited resources, in difficult circumstances. But when meeting the needs of the starving it is as ‘simple’ as feeding them food. In this sense it is not that difficult at all. You know what to do, you know how to do it, its just a matter of doing it. It’s the actual ‘doing it’ that’s hard. But with the spiritually poor where do you even start? What do you even do? Mother wasn’t even sure herself. I would maintain that the difficulty of actually ‘doing it’ is the same for warring against spiritual poverty as it is physical poverty because both demand sacrifices we would rather not make, but in addition to this actual doing it there are the added problems of not knowing what to do. This is the sense that I mean when I speak of it being more difficult.
Modes:
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I can’t even believe that you called dying of hunger and curable diseases “superficial”! Dying babies are not superficial.
Here is where language betrays me. When I said dying of hunger is “superficial” I did not mean to imply that it was insignificant or that it was not hard hitting or deeply impacting. What I meant was that when you look at a starving baby you can tell, just by looking at the surface, that there is something massively wrong going on here. Just a couple of days ago I was in a malnutrition clinic looking at a baby girl named Lovely. I saw that she had loose skin, immediate I could tell that this is a sing of dehydration. I saw that she had a large tight belly, immediate I knew this signified malnutrition. I felt in my arms that she weighed next to nothing, I saw with my eyes a skeleton frame that should have been hidden by baby fat, I saw sunken cheeks in a head that looked like a skull with skin hung over it. By merely ‘superficial’ observation I could tell something was massively wrong with her. On the other hand I just watched an episode of DATELINE about the first mass killing in America. From mere superficial observation the killer looked to be a healthy handsome well adjusted man with a happy family of his own and a good job. One author noted that it was easy to hate Charles Mansion because he looked the way a madman should look but this guy gave mass murder a pretty face. This pretty faced man killed his family and then picked of people one by one with a sniper riffle for over an hour and a half. How was anyone supposed to see, by superficial observation, that there was something massively wrong with this guy? This is what I mean when I say physical poverty is superficial. It is not to say that it is not also sublime and terrible.
Modes:
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If you were right in saying that it is easier to minister to the physically poor, then what would reflect that reality would be that most people tend to “simply” take care of the materially poor and oppressed but don’t work so hard as to deal with the tougher spiritual poverty all around them. My experience in Evangelicalism is precisely the opposite.
I guess you and I have had different experiences in Evangelicalism.
Modes:
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SMALL GROUPS abound and we all share about our struggles and most groups have at least one person with serous psychological/spiritual problems (perhaps a suicidal person or one with eating disorders, etc, aids, who knows), and that group shares the load of helping that person along, but note, this is NOT by any stretch of my imagination harder than leaving our safe little neighborhoods in the suburbs, haulin’ our butts downtown or where ever the materially poor are in your area. Life shows clearly which is truly easier and which more difficult and more often neglected.
I agree that “life shows clearly which is truly easier and which more difficult…,” but I would argue that what life shows is in favor of my argument. A child is dying of an iron deficiency (here is where anyone who knows about medicine will see that I know nothing. I don’t even know if you can die from an iron deficiency but if not just change it to some type of deficiency you can die from). Saving their life is simply a matter of giving them a shot of iron. A person in a small group is struggling with an eating disorder. Is saving them as easy as giving them a shot? I think not. So which is truly harder to deal with? Again Mother says, “When I pick up a hungry person form the streets, I give him rice and bred, and I have satisfied that hunger. But a person which is shut out, feels unwanted by society, unloved and terrified – how much more difficult is it to remove that hunger?” As for which one is more often neglected I see no way of really telling but once again the odds seem stacked in my favor. If we just look at all of the poverty that we can see and do neglect just think about how much poverty is left neglected because we can’t see it? “We often look without seeing. Am I able to see the poor and suffering?” (Mother Teresa 79).
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 11:16 PM (GMT -6) | | Modes:
quote:
5. Compassion is a universal category that we should apply to all of our neighbors. Justice is in the hands of those with power and they also bear the responsibility for it. Have compassion for the people who you meet with spiritual problems, by all means! But for God’s sake, recognize that JUSTICE WILL be served, we will either contribute to it now or it will be meted out against us later. You bifurcate these two away from each other in a very unfortunate phrase here: “We have no life to offer the material poor except a [sic] that of material life and spiritual death.” This is terribly confused. Those who are dying physically must be saved physically SO THAT they might be saved spiritually. Again, the SPLIT here is what is truly superficial. Baptism is for LIFE in general, not just “life after death” but this assumes the person will live long enough to be reached in such a way!
I like your distinction between compassion and justice. Here are some questions for you: since justice deals with power and responsibility should we be aiming at equal power for all or is it okay for their to be some with more power and some with less so long as those with more power take care of instead of exploit those under them? What would an economy were everyone had equal power even look like? Can we even imagine such as one? (these are questions Willard asks, they aren’t really mine.)
Modes: “As Christians we have both physical and spiritual life to offer the materially poor, and it is the poor who we are obligated (I would argue) to take it FIRST. Those who are not materially poor, probably have already encountered the gospel (on tv, radio, or in church or whatever) and have had some opportunity to do something about it.”
Wislawa: Two questions mainly. I am in total agreement that Christians SHOULD have both physical and spiritual life to offer the poor, but do we really have this life? It has been my experience that we do not. Dr. Neil Anderson, when he preached at Woodland a couple years ago said that we only really preach 1/3 of the gospel. The part we teach is that you’re a sinner and Christ died to take away your sin. The 2/3 that we don’t teach consists of the resurrected life that ACCTUALLY saves us, and the spiritual warfare that gives us a job and therefore an identity. This leads to my second question. Have the materially rich really heard the gospel? Given the facts can we even say that materially rich Christians have the gospel given our reluctance to live it in its financial consequences? I’ll admit that pretty much 100% of Americans have listened to God-talk type stuff but how many have really had the gospel demonstrated to them in concrete actions and love, love which might take the form of meeting their spiritual poverty? “We tell people how kind, forgiving, and understanding God is, but are we the living proof? Can they really see this kindness, this forgiveness, this understanding alive in us?” (Mother Teresa 45).
I can’t speak for you; I can only speak for myself. Maybe you really do have God’s life to offer. If so can I have some? All I know is that what I have is more of a living death than anything else. I haven’t got anything to offer a dying world other than what they’ve already got.
Perhaps this would be a good place to deal with the spiritual/physical dichotomy that I have been forced to use for lack of a better way to say things. In truth I don’t like it. I believe that there is something very spiritual about giving someone a bowl of rice or a glass of water. I believe that the stuff of hugs, kisses, human touch, is spiritual. And I believe that the only way to war against what I’ve been forced to refer to as ‘spiritual poverty’ is through embodied gestures. Loneliness is an embodied thing, so is unlovedness. Perhaps a better distinction would be visibility and invisibility. What I’ve been calling ‘physical poverty’ shows up on the radar screen of our senses. It is visible. ‘Spiritual poverty,’ however, although embodied, rarely shows up visibly in the body until it is too late. Some who is suicidal may exist embodied for a long time without ever letting on until one day it does show up in their body in a visible gunshot wound or some other form. All this is to say that if you’re frustrated with my bifurcation I am too. We must war against embodied spiritual poverty in embodied ways. In the big scheme of things I don’t think they are too much different, the spiritual and the physical. The only difference that I can see is that we have validated one as the only kind that counts and invalidated the other as somehow not real.
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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whasssuuuppp
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 210
| Posted 8/17/2001 11:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Probably against my better judgment, I'm coming back online in this discussion board thing. It's addicting. But I think there's an important point here--while Wislawa is pointing out that dealing with certain parts of physical poverty is easy (giving an iron injection, for example, or feeding someone)--and he is right--what he is neglecting to say is that dealing with these problems long-term is incredibly difficult. And here is where Modes is right--because he seems to be talking about more long-term "solutions" (call it what you may) to physical poverty. Because this is where addressing physical poverty is much more difficult. Addressing superficial manifestations of deep physical and societal problems is "easy," I guess, but truly committing to changing social structures that cause physical poverty in the first place, or committing one's life to addressing physical poverty each and every day, is much much much more of a committment.
But at the same time, Wislawa definitely has some important things to say about spiritual poverty...it is everywhere, and dealing with it is in no way easy. Perhaps neither spiritual or physical poverty is easy, and we are called to address both...???? I'm not a Bible scholar, but there seems to be biblical precedent for both, though I agree with Modes that the church has been so incredibly bad in the past 100+ years at addressing physical poverty, because we were afraid of the "social gospel," I think.
Here is a quote, I forget from who, it goes something like this, I think someone's posted it on this site somewhere already--We need to avoid two fallicies, neglecting the material needs of a person while addressing the spiritual and neglecting the spiritual needs while addressing the physical. One is a ghost and the other is a corpse. Anyone familiar with this???
That's all.
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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 11:32 PM (GMT -6) | | Modes:
quote:
6. “Mother” may have said, as you report, “that the poor and the rich were made for each other. The rich will save the poor and the poor will save the rich.” Perhaps she said it, but I hope biblically minded people reject it. Her life’s witness is her legacy, not her theology. Be careful here. Now you are saying that God made the poor poor. Lovely! Don’t you see how this all begins to form a worldview where status quo is likely to be maintained? Bad theology does that.
Okay this one is my fault. I was paraphrasing a quote by Mother for the purpose (really) of agreeing with and lending support to something you had said. Go back and look at the context I really was trying to help you out. I’ve been looking for the exact quote but haven’t been able to find it yet but I can assure you it doesn’t mean that God created the poor to be poor!!! Mother never believed it. If she did she wouldn’t have done what she did. You are absolutely right that any thinking along these lines should be thrown out. This is just another reason to throw out Calvinism which would have to maintain that for whatever reason that God wanted me to be rich and someone else to be poor. This just weakens our already weak feeling of obligation to the poor. I once had a Calvinist tell me that I shouldn’t want to serve the poor for in doing so I am actually thwarting God’s will!!! How’s that for inconsistency? According to this guy (he quoted a couple scriptures about God making both the rich and poor and stuff) God desires the poor to be poor for a reason and if he wants them to be rich he will make them rich, and if I make them rich I’ll be going against Gods “obvious” will for their lives!!! Sheesh!
Mother in many places spoke directly against this (not to mention every action she made spoke even louder against this). For example she writes, “If our poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again He appears to us in the hungry man, in the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm” (40-41).
The actual quote that I was trying to paraphrase was more along the lines of how BOTH the poor and the rich are lost and how the complement one another in each other’s salvation. It is in this complementary fashion that we might be able to say that they were ‘made for eachother’ much like we say a certain couple was made for eachother if they complement eachother nicely, even though as all us openness cats know God does not, in reality, make one individual specifically for the sake of the other. Mother was commenting on how the rich who are lost can find their salvation in what the poor already have, and how the poor who are also lost can find what they need in what we have. We both have something that the other needs. This is what the quote meant.
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 11:39 PM (GMT -6) | | Hey whasssuuuppp whats up? should have known you'd be awake around this hour. Good stuff Good stuff. so here's my question:
Should we meet peoples needs in the hear-and-now? How do we meet someone's needs if not when the are 'present to us'? How can we do anything long-term that isn't dealing with absence? Mother seemed to prefer the individual here-and-now approch as did Levinas. what do you think?
There is a kind of sustainable and lasting change that comes from meeting every need as it is presented to us. Since we live in finite bodies this is all we can ever do, or is it?
btw welcome back even though i know you're just scared that i'll end up abducting you eventually.
ps whats this shaddy buisness about you not being a Bible scholar? you dont give yourself enough credit.
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Wislawa
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/17/2001 11:49 PM (GMT -6) | | Modes:
quote:
7. I recognize with you that you have not said that the commands to serve the poor are not optional. But it is a formal recognition only at this point. The force of your convictions as I add them up point me to see that the REAL need is to take care of the so called “spiritually poor” like ourselves because there is “a worse poverty in ourselves”. This is very dangerous thinking indeed. Perhaps you are truly comprehensive and broad scoped in your vision, and at the same time so faithful that you do not neglect the poor yourself, but can you not see that the message cannot go out like that in general? People are simply not so noble as to hear you “correctly” (assuming you were correct). If the message goes out in that way, there will be very little solid challenge to the status quo at all. I plead with you, even if you choose to retain such thinking for yourself, at least don’t preach or teach such things to those of us not yet so strong…
sorry bro I think its too late. I remember reading Pseudo-Diagnoses (whops silly spelling error. Cool first name though eh dudechild?) comments about the Song of Songs. He said that it should not be taught at all because no one but a few would understand it correctly. It’s my opinion that everyone loses when we take this route. My views may not be true, that’s true, but if they are true should we know persue truth even if only the noble can keep up? Isn’t this how it always is? Has there ever been a time when nobility was not required to follow truths lead?
Above in your post you urged me to follow Mother in action, how can I without emulating the nobility she had herself? This, more than suicide, sounds like giving up, sounds cowardly, sounds lifeless. But that’s just how it sounds. I love you’re conviction even if it has drained the energy out of me this time. I think it’s time for me to quit for a while.
Modes:
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I noted earlier that I would really like to see the actual statement that the RCC actually put out on this before I say any more about what they are after in particular. Can someone point me in the right direction to find this info?
you know I haven’t seen it myself either. I only heard about it. If I ever find it I’ll send it your way.
Love
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Modes of Thought
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 817
| Posted 8/18/2001 9:34 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey Wislawa, great to hear from you! I appreciate the energy you poured into this last night. I have tried to read you carefully and will offer some short responses.
Before I start, I think a thanks to Whasssuuppp is in order. I'll come back to that...
1. Regarding Matt. 5 vs. Luke 6 (not Mark) on the sermon on the mount, I don't have answers to your questions about the manuscripts off the top of my head, but it does seem to me that one way to settle our differences would be for you to follow Matt. and for me to follow Luke. Of course this is an example of the diversity of witness that the Bible offers. Perhaps God is teaching you one thing at this time and me another. This is a very real possibility in my mind. you seem concerned by the question of verbal plenary inspiration, that is of little interest to me. God uses the Bible as God sees fit. That is good enough for me. Any theory much more "robust" usually amounts to a way for some individual or group to control the meaning of the texts. I agree with Ricoeur, and the larger church tradition, that there is a "surplus of meaning" available in each text. In the end, Jesus (THE Word of God) does trump the Bible (the witness to the Word of God) or the logic of the apologetic falls apart anyway...in other words we only call the Bible the Word of God because Christ treated and endorsed it in some way. For this reason, Christ's words are very important to me.
2. Our difference in experiences of Evangelical culture is striking to me. Whassupp seems to acknowledge with me that most Evangelicals have seriously dropped the ball on social issues becuase of their fear of being labled "Social Gospel". This is not a fear of mine because God's calling on me is clear in this area. You seem to indicate the the larger degree of neglect has been with the spiritually poor, I have not seen it this way. Not sure how we can reconcile such a difference. Perhaps we see what we are called to minister to. That would make sense wouldn't it?
3. My calling of attention to SK's themes of absolute and relative could use some elaboration: the tremendous responsibility you feel makes me wonder if you are taking on Absolute responsibility instead of lettig God carry that burden. Rather, we are gvien a load (to use your helpful distinctions here) by God through discernment and we are called to obedience in that area. This involves our Absolute obedience/responsibility to God, but our relative capacity and energy expenditure toward those around us. Of course, the WHOLE problem, be it spiritual or physical, requires far more than our relative contribution, but God only calls us to what we can handle. For us to take on more than (as it seems you do at least existentially) that constitutes a misrelation within the self as well as to God. the Christian life consists mainly of: thanksgiving to God for both creation and sustaining of our existence, obedience to God's call on our lives according to our giftedness and particularly our discerning of God's will for us (Rom. 14:23), and rest both in the sabbath cyclical sense and in the more final sense of awareness of God's sufficiency in all things to make good on God's promises.
4. Related to the above is the understanding of others and Other. Yes, Christ is Other, and he is present in the other. What's different is that we are to relate Absolutely to God in Christ through the power of the Spirit and we are to relate relatively to others with the deep awareness that Christ is present there as well and our calling is comprehensive. Ultimate responsibility, responsibility for the possibilities that are present to Creation is always God's. Our recognition of that, along with our forgiveness for our sins and the clarity of our calling is sufficient for this verse to be made true for us: "it is for freedom that Christ has set us free..." my paraphrase, probably off a bit, but the sense of it is there...
5. With Whassup, I say that both forms of ministry are valid but they must not be mutually exclusive. Spirit and body are to be and remain integrated, even beyond the grave. The elevation of one over the other is always a mistake, unless we are to be manicheans, gnostics or hedonists. Christ had a physical body post-resurrection, lets not forget. As I said earlier, WHOLISTIC ministry is needed. compassion for all and justice for the oppressed. I AM a liberationist who affirms God's preferential option for the poor, perhaps that is the root of the disagreement we have.
6. this takes up the #4 question of your stuff above...you aske what is left over when the injustices are set right. This is a strange question to me. I am no optimist, as I have said elsewhere, I do not expect justice to emerge prior to Christ's return, however, I am called to fight for it and I intend to. If I truly thought that we could ever fully transform the world prior to the return of Christ, I would have more sympathy for your question. As it stands, it is a matter of obedience to God and justice for its own sake. Furthermore, it is claimed as a witness to the truth of our faith. my main point in my old version of #4 was that the texts do not allow for a simply spiritual reading, even in matt, if you keep the whole book in view. Chapter 25 (sheep and goats) insures we attend to the phyiscally poor, whatever else we may do. Again, "both/and" is the big picture, and each of us must discern what God is calling us as individuals to do with our own finite resources.
7. I understand that you seek balance where you perceive imbalance. Appearantly we see the opposite imbalances and are calling for opposing revisions of attention. My initial and continuing conern is that we use the bibical passages that appropriate to support our various concerns. I am suspicious of Matt. 5 without keeping Matt.25 in view, additionally I have questions about its relation to Luke and more importantly to Jesus himself. These concerns are things that I would like people to have in view when they read Matt. 5. There are plenty of verses in the Bible which speak to your concerns, and you may even be right about Matt. 5. But surely Luke 6 and Matt. 25 support my concerns and have important reference to Matt. 5. Rather than pick our proof texts ands have a stand off, lets confess that both our messages are present in the Bible and THEN when we preach on these things, lets be faithful to whatever the texts are calling us to. Or rather, what God is calling us to through the text. Perhaps God is calling you to something through Matt. 5; God is calling me to something through Luke 6 and matt 25 and it causes me to read Matt. 5 cautiously.
8. I have an issue to take up with you about what is "easier" or not. This seems to me to be the wrong question. For instance with your example with the sniper /murderer, anyone who got to know him and truly tried to love him would have seen that there was something seriously wrong. Perhaps this is even more true than I indicate in those instaces where one who is called to minister to someone such as him becuase God will be helping you to discern what it is you are up against and what you are to do. This is true of spiritled ministry generally, as I am sure you are aware. Whassup read me well that neither are easy when the long term is taken into consideration, but that question is still irrelevant. The real question for the Christian is "What does God require of me?" Christ's sheep hear his voice. What does not proceed from faith, is sin. If God is calling you to it, do it. God empowers us in spite of our weakness. This means that God will also offer solutions to problems we can't solve on our own, if it is for us to solve it at all. Who knows, we may be only a piece of the long term solution for some things, many probably. I will not yield to you the more difficult status of ministering to the spiritually poor, I can see that you reciprocate this sentiment. Let us call a truce and recognise that both are immeasurably hard and indeed impossible but for the grace and power of God.
9. I have never read Willard and the more I hear about what he teaches the less I tend to desire to read him. As I said above, the "goal" of justice is not threatening us so that we might rightly ask "what next?" Of course, we both recognize the inadequacy of the dichotomy spiritual/physical, so this collapses much of our rhetoric from the get go.
10. Please tell me about your experience of "living death". You seem to be indicating that you do not experience God's life in you and the freedom that Christ has won for you. if this is the case, your concern for the spiritually poor makes that much more sense to me. I do not have spiritual riches of myself, but I am an heir to the Lord and am richly blessed beyond all comprehension! mine anyway. I long to share this joy and hope with others, what do you plan to offer the spiritualy poor if you are void of all but the death they currently have? Sorry that this is so direct, but it seems pretty pivotal to our conversation. I must be missing something obvious here, help me out.
11. You asked about approaches, this too is a matter of discerment. So far, God has given my wife and I some clear vision (for those present and absent) and also plenty of tangible opportunities to serve on the indivdual here and now basis, the two go hand in hand for us.
12. Wislawa, I appreciate your passion and conviction as well, I truly do beleive that our "differences" here are more of degree than type. We both deny the final dichotomy of spiritual/physical, though you start to replace it with visible/invisible. But neither of us is prepared to neglect one for of suffering in order to focus exclusively on the other...I just ask that we be honest with ourselves and the texts about what it is we are called to do generally and most of all, that we be honset with God in our discernment of what it is God requires of us personally. After all, we are all in the process of becoming which practically is to be described by the phrase "fear and trembling" when it comes to our responsibility to obey God's call on each of us. BUT what we are absolutely responsible for is what God calls us to do this should take PRIMARY place, not all the possible ways we can concieve of our relative responsibility in all other activities of our pain-ridden universe, which deserve only secondary attention until God changes the status of some of those particulars before us.
Love ya Wis, thanks Whassup. Later...
Modes
"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK
Edited by - modesofthought on 08/18/2001 2:52:41 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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whasssuuuppp
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| Posted 8/19/2001 7:18 AM (GMT -6) | | To Wislawa:
quote:
Should we meet peoples needs in the hear-and-now? How do we meet someone's needs if not when the are 'present to us'? How can we do anything long-term that isn't dealing with absence? Mother seemed to prefer the individual here-and-now approch as did Levinas. what do you think?
There is a kind of sustainable and lasting change that comes from meeting every need as it is presented to us. Since we live in finite bodies this is all we can ever do, or is it?
Of course I'm in favor of a here-and-now approach--you know that! It really is how we interact with the world. But I think what I'm saying is that in the midst of that perhaps we should be striving for an approach to physical poverty that does more than put bandaids on it. And in all honesty I'm not sure what this means--is it fighting for certain legislation? Should we even rely on governmental solutions? Are they even possible in some countries? Not sure...but I DO think the church and Christians should play a much bigger role than we do now...we've done a great job (at least in some churches) of pampering the soul at the expense of the body.
quote:
btw welcome back even though i know you're just scared that i'll end up abducting you eventually
Yup, but now you CAN'T! And I'm having fun, besides.
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When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die, then oppression, persecution, and even death will be unable to take our freedom.
Henri Nouwen | | Back to Top | | |
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whasssuuuppp
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| Posted 8/19/2001 7:32 AM (GMT -6) | | To Modes--
quote:
With Whassup, I say that both forms of ministry are valid but they must not be mutually exclusive. Spirit and body are to be and remain integrated, even beyond the grave. The elevation of one over the other is always a mistake, unless we are to be manicheans, gnostics or hedonists. Christ had a physical body post-resurrection, lets not forget. As I said earlier, WHOLISTIC ministry is needed. compassion for all and justice for the oppressed.
You know, BALANCE seems to be a major problem for evangelicals in a LOT of areas, including this one. We have made this issue one that is unfortunately mutually exclusive when in fact it could be one of the most integrated areas in which we minister. I do think the reason people tend to neglect the body (at least in evavgelical circles) is because of theological thinking and teaching that suggests we will only be soul/spirit in the afterlife, not body. WHY this teaching is so popular, I don't know, but it is everywhere. Also contributing is pre-millenial theology: The world will just keep getting worse and worse anyways, until the rapture (I've got problems with this whole rapture business too), and then God restores the world. So we can neglect it now.
Whatever.
quote:
I AM a liberationist who affirms God's preferential option for the poor, perhaps that is the root of the disagreement we have.
Now THIS is really, really interesting. I first learned about liberation theology a few years ago and have been kind of fascinated by it ever since, though I have to admit I haven't read much of liberation authors, except Aristide. He has this little book called In the Parish of the Poor and it's really interesting.
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When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die, then oppression, persecution, and even death will be unable to take our freedom.
Henri Nouwen | | Back to Top | | |
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Wislawa
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Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/20/2001 12:01 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks wasssuuuppp.
Even though we haven't closed of any questions here are a few more for anyone who still cares:
(note these are only questions. i'm not trying to imply any anwers either way)
1: Does one have to be rich in order to be greedy?
2: Might the finacially poor actually be in greater slavery to money than the finacially rich? If money is all you think about does it really matter if the sums are small or large?
3: Will there be poverty of any kind in heaven? Obviously there will be an economy in heaven since an economy is merely all relationships between two or more faces. But will this economy involve economic ventures as they are commonly known?
4: what if we were all connected by magical embilical cords that let us feel when someone was starving as if it was ourselves that was starving?
5: Since many of those who are hungry in the world are Christians should we try to feed our fellow Christians first or should we go out of our way to feed nonChristians first? I know most of us (myself included) wouldn't diferentiate between the two at all, but i want to try to bring this to a head. if you could only feed one who whould it be and why?
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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whasssuuuppp
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| Posted 8/20/2001 9:03 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
1: Does one have to be rich in order to be greedy?
Of course not. "Rich" has different meanings in different contexts, anyway. Even very poor communities tend to have social structures that define some people within that community as "rich," even though by our standards they would never be rich. And very poor people can be greedy, for sure.
quote:
2: Might the finacially poor actually be in greater slavery to money than the finacially rich? If money is all you think about does it really matter if the sums are small or large?
Possibly, but I've never been truly poor, so I don't know. Also, I'm sure some of the financially rich think about money as much as the some of the poor.
quote:
3: Will there be poverty of any kind in heaven? Obviously there will be an economy in heaven since an economy is merely all relationships between two or more faces. But will this economy involve economic ventures as they are commonly known?
Hmm, haven't visited heaven lately, so I don't know.
quote:
4: what if we were all connected by magical embilical cords that let us feel when someone was starving as if it was ourselves that was starving?
Then I think physical poverty would no longer exist.
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When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die, then oppression, persecution, and even death will be unable to take our freedom.
Henri Nouwen | | Back to Top | | |
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whasssuuuppp
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| Posted 8/20/2001 8:11 PM (GMT -6) | | To Modes and whoever else:
I'm reading this book right now called Transforming Health: Christian Approaches to Healing and Wholeness (Eric Ram, Ed. World Vision international, 1995) and found a quote that really relates to some of what's been said here:
quote:
Within the church itself, there is division in approaches to salvation. The Pentecostals stress the baptism and gift of the Holy Spirit, as well as divine healing. The mainline churches promote social action. The evangelicals stress personal commitment to Christ and faithfulness to Scripture. There tends to be mutual suspicion among these three camps. What if all three could unite their valid concerns around the needs of the whole person? (page 23)
Amen.
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When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die, then oppression, persecution, and even death will be unable to take our freedom.
Henri Nouwen | | Back to Top | | |
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Wislawa
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Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/23/2001 9:28 AM (GMT -6) | | whasssuuuppp,
wholistic vissions, like many other areas, is one of the places where community development and missions are caught in a chatch-22.
If you just meet peoples physical needs, or the demands of social action, or just focus on their soul, you get accused of not being wholistic.
However if you take the wholistic approch you get accused of trying to sell your gosple, or your ideology on social polotics, or whatever it is that's at the center of your wholistic approch. and don't think that there doesn't have to be a center. to be centerless is already to be essectric to a center.
i just think that the whole area of cd is one where you can't even move without become a hypocrit somewhere. there are so many rules your supposed to obey that if you move at all you transgress some of them. and if you sit and do nothing you violate the rule that says you can't do that either.
wholistic ministry sounds great. it makes for a good bumper sticker. but it has a tons of practical problems. how can you treat someone wholistically when we the treaters are not wholistically healthy ourselves? how can we be wholistic when we have to specalize to be good or profesional at anything? how can we defend ourselves from buying souls with all of our goodies?
not that i'm anti-wholistic. its just that im sympothetic to everyone who is trying to do something and ends up doing everything wrong which includes wholistic types.
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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Wislawa
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Total Posts : 83
| Posted 8/23/2001 9:30 AM (GMT -6) | | #1 of a two part satire injection
Speaking of the dead alive and the rich poor look what I found at theonion.com:
Family Of Five Found Alive In Suburbs
BUFFALO GROVE, IL--The Holsapple family, long feared missing or spiritually dead, was found alive in the Chicago suburbs Monday, somehow managing to survive in the hostile environment for more than eight years.
Rescuers discovered the five-person clan after a survey plane spotted a crude signal fire the family had created in a barbecue grill.
"Imagine my surprise when, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, I saw these flames," pilot Tony Riggs said. "I did a second pass and was shocked to see actual human beings down there. I remember thinking to myself, 'My God, who could live in a place like that?' It's incredible to imagine they survived there for so long."
Bill Holsapple, 41, wife Meredith, 39, and son Jay disappeared in June 1993, when, two months after Jay's birth, the family of three left their Chicago apartment for parts unknown. The three were not heard from again until Monday, when they were found in the suburban wasteland known as Buffalo Grove with two new family members, Kimberly, 4, and Jordan, 2.
To protect themselves from the elements, the Holsapples fashioned a three-bedroom, ranch-style lean-to with brick facing and white aluminum siding. During their years on the acre-and-a-half lot, the Holsapples faced many hardships, including septic-tank backups, frequent ant infestation, and the threat of rezoning to erect an industrial park across the street.
"The Holsapples were in pretty bad shape when we found them lying lifelessly on their patio furniture," paramedic Mary Gills said. "Their stomachs were bloated from years of soda and fast food, and they were all suffering from severe cultural malnutrition."
Upon discovery, the family was rushed back to civilization. Attempts to reassimilate the Holsapples into metropolitan living with a trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and dinner at a nice Peruvian restaurant were met with resistance.
"When we got to the museum, the family became quite agitated," psychologist Dr. Allan Green said. "Jay kept calling all the modern art 'weird' and Meredith said, 'If we wanted to look at art, we could just go to Deck The Walls at the mall.'"
Green feared that the family was not ready to rejoin urban life after having received little or no cultural stimuli in the suburbs for nearly a decade.
"We were going to ease them into it, perhaps with a marginally artsy movie like Being John Malkovich," Green said. "Then Kimberly kept complaining that she missed 'Ashley' and wanted to go home. At first, I thought we'd left one of the family members behind, but then she said Ashley was a friend. I was shocked to learn of whole tribes of suburban dwellers, people who live their entire lives there."
Upon arriving in Buffalo Grove in 1993, the Holsapples befriended the locals, called "suburbanites," and soon adopted their ways entirely, from the mode of dress to the food they eat. Meredith Holsapple described in great detail the suburban settlements called "sub-divisions" where great emphasis is placed on maintaining lawns, watching televised sports, birthing children, listening to Top 40 music, and collecting stuffed animals.
According to University of Illinois– Chicago anthropologist Dr. Arthur Cox, to survive such an emotionally, culturally, and spiritually barren place, the Holsapples were forced to "go native."
"Much like those stranded in remote islands, the Holsapple family looked to the indigenous population to learn techniques for adaptation and survival," Cox said. "Shocking as it is, one eventually becomes acclimated and then numbed to the theme restaurants, cinema multiplexes, and warehouse-sized grocery stores
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"The world is full of strange, isolated cultures, but the American suburbs are unique among these in that virtually no culture exists there," Green said. "Even the Eskimos living in the most barren, remote Arctic regions have whale-bone art and beautiful storytelling traditions. The odd part about these suburbanites is how, unlike the Eskimos and other isolated groups, they live in close proximity to places brimming with art, life, and vitality. Yet somehow, they shut all of it out. We don't know the reason for this, but I don't think anyone wants to spend enough time in the suburbs to find out."
-Wislawa
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].
Canticles 8:6
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whasssuuuppp
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| Posted 8/23/2001 1:38 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Family Of Five Found Alive In Suburbs
quote:
wholistic vissions, like many other areas, is one of the places where community development and missions are caught in a chatch-22.
If you just meet peoples physical needs, or the demands of social action, or just focus on their soul, you get accused of not being wholistic.
Some of my thoughts on this--It is kind of the "in" thing now, so I know what you're saying (totally something that ends up on a bumper sticker, I know, but hear me out...) And actually, I think the idea of being "wholistic" is just as popular, if not more popular, in secular circles than in Christian ones. I have heard MANY lectures and sat thru lots of small groups in school over the past year, all with the intention that I learn how to approach the health of a person WHOLISTICALLY (i.e., consider their physical complaints in light of a person's religion, culture, sexuality, you name it). So there's nothing necessarily Christian about "wholism." That being said, I think Christians (and people from some other religions), have the best basis for wholism because of our presuppositions that a belief in a "higher power" really is an important in one's life. It's one thing for a health care worker, who is an atheist/agnostic, to talk to her patients about religious concerns, but in the end she really doesn't care about this person's religious concerns. It is another for someone who really DOES care to address the same concerns.
In evangelicalism, emphasis has been placed on personal witnessing, saving souls, going door to door, jack mcdowell books, you know the stuff. As I (and Modes) have pointed out, there's been a strong lacking of things that might fall under the category of "social action," for a lot of reasons. And people who are really good at social action are accused of ignoring the gospel. That's why I posted the quote a few days ago, because I think the author gets at this. And his point is that we should stop be so suspicious of each other and more open to learning from each other.
I myself definitely fall more towards the social action side of things. I gravitate towards that. I'm much better at those sorts of things than what evangelicalism emphasizes. I think that's why I don't fit in a lot of evangelical circles. But also why I need to learn from them.
quote:
However if you take the wholistic approch you get accused of trying to sell your gosple, or your ideology on social polotics, or whatever it is that's at the center of your wholistic approch. and don't think that there doesn't have to be a center. to be centerless is already to be essectric to a center.
Yeah, of course that happens, but is that a good reason NOT to do anything? Like you said, everyone gets accused of trying to sell their gospel, even if they don't have one. So join the crowd. 
quote:
i just think that the whole area of cd is one where you can't even move without become a hypocrit somewhere. there are so many rules your supposed to obey that if you move at all you transgress some of them. and if you sit and do nothing you violate the rule that says you can't do that either.
I think that no matter what you do in life, not just in the areas of cd and wholistic ministry, you're probably breaking someone's rules. By someone's standards, you'll probably be a hypocrite, and by God's standards, we're all hypocrites sometimes. But if this is an excuse to do nothing, then we should all lock ourselves in the basement and die. (Wislawa, you of all people should NOT take me literally here!  )
quote:
wholistic ministry sounds great. it makes for a good bumper sticker.
Yeah, it ranks right up there with the one: "With Jesus YOU can do a U-turn!"
quote:
but it has a tons of practical problems. how can you treat someone wholistically when we the treaters are not wholistically healthy ourselves?
Have you read The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen?
quote:
how can we be wholistic when we have to specalize to be good or profesional at anything?
That's why we work together, I think. It's like a networking thing, at least this is how I see it being played out in the U.S. and in some other countries.
quote:
how can we defend ourselves from buying souls with all of our goodies?
A hard problem. Unfortunately I think it happens all the time.
quote:
not that i'm anti-wholistic. its just that im sympothetic to everyone who is trying to do something and ends up doing everything wrong which includes wholistic types.
I know you're not antiwholistic. But I don't think everyone ends up doing everything wrong, either. There are people out there who are genuine, who really aren't out to win converts with goodies, who are good at networking, who DO address the whole person. Things are hard, and there are problems, but this is life.
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When we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born and will be there after we die, then oppression, persecution, and even death will be unable to take our freedom.
Henri Nouwen
Edited by - whasssuuuppp on 08/23/2001 6:40:36 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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whasssuuuppp
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| Posted 9/24/2001 10:22 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi all,
Sorry to dig this thread out of the grave, but I found the quote I was looking for a long time ago
Back in August I said
quote:
There is a quote, I forget from who, it goes something like this, I think someone's posted it on this site somewhere already--We need to avoid two fallicies, neglecting the material needs of a person while addressing the spiritual and neglecting the spiritual needs while addressing the physical. One is a ghost and the other is a corpse. Anyone familiar with this???
Anyways, I found it tonight in Beyond Hunger: A Biblical Mandate for Social Responsibility by Art Beals (Multnomah, 1985, p. 86):
"An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body, and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost and the other is a corpse." E. Stanley Jones
WU
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Lespwa fe viv.
Hope makes us live.
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Modes of Thought
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Total Posts : 817
| Posted 9/25/2001 6:47 AM (GMT -6) | | The last several posts indicates precisely why I find so much hope in the word "obedience". God is not silent, God is a good and effective communicator. The sheep hear the voice of the shepherd. I fully believe and experience that God calls all Christians, even all people, to a ministry and that God can and does direct us. This is true both coorporately and, for this discussion, perhaps more importantly, as individuals and married couples/families. God has a vision for us, as individuals, as ministry teams. We do not need to solve all the questions posed here, but rather, as faithful Christians we must discern what it is that God is calling YOU to do. What is God's vision for YOU as an individual, a family, a small group, etc.? THIS is why I so often repeat the phrase from Romans 14:23, that what does not proceed from faith is sin. If God has not called you to it, don't do it. It is also in this context which I understand the phrase, "Pray without ceasing..." and "walking in the Spirit.." What we have been discussing here is indeed important and educational, but obedience trumps it on the level of the individual (or ministry group). "What is good and what does the Lord require of YOU?" is really the question. We do not bear the burden of that being "wholistic" in retrospect, that is God's burden, for Who else can possibly have a wholistic perpsective? It is confused and, frankly, ridiculous to claim that point of view...of course we want to move toward wholistic adequacy, but it will finally only be possible if God is in, with, and under it. (to steal some helpful Lutheranspeak)
"Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth. Despite all modern philosophy, there is an infinite difference here..." SK
Edited by - ModesofThought on 09/26/2001 09:05:04 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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whasssuuuppp
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 210
| Posted 9/25/2001 8:19 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks Modes. You always make me think, which is always a GOOD thing! I pray you don't grow tired of saying the same things over and over again, because everyone needs to hear it.
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Lespwa fe viv.
Hope makes us live.
A Haitian proverb | | Back to Top | | |
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