Focus: While family, education, social class, and geography all contribute to how we think about God, our experiences and perceptions along life’s journey also shape our thinking. Being comfortable with ambiguity, metaphor, and uncertainty help us get the Divine “out of the box” and rethink theological ideas that havebecome barriers to our further spiritual growth.
"Alice Walker's The Color Purple is an account of a journey of faith. The sojourner, named Celie, discovers new ways of understanding religion and of imaging the Divine. In one of her letters to a friend, Celie writes, "She say, ‘My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being a part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed.’"
"To ask the questions of how the divine is intertwined with the world is to think theologically: How do we understand the unfathomable mystery that we've come to call God? Is there a God whose character and ways of relating to the world can be explained in ways that make sense? As Bill Nelson has suggested, even the word “God” itself is a “very slender word that simply covers our shivering ignorance.” Exploring these and other questions and concepts are at the heart of thinking theologically – a practice in which we all engage, whether we know it or not."
Re-thinking Some Long-Held Ideas
"Reading the Bible closely, it becomes clear that there’s no one way of understanding who God is and how God relates to the world. The Bible is the witness of generations of faithful people recording their own understandings of the divine in their particular time, place, and culture. This theological pluralism reveals changing, developing, and sometimes conflicting ideas about God.
"The Bible itself represents a variety of perspectives, each reflecting different understandings of God. The challenge of thinking theologically is about maintaining a creative tension between ideas that generate dialogue, not absolute certainty. At its best, thinking theologically is not about facts, but about wrestling with often abstract ideas and concepts.
"Traditional understandings of Christology, Atonement, and the Incarnation are all in flux. In fact, many people find these concepts to be quite irrelevant to contemporary spirituality. Two of the major ideas that continue to cause conflict among people of faith are the language we use for the Divine and the notion of “omnipotence.”
"Many of us get in a rut with our language about or image of God that is narrow and constricting. As our life experience broadens our understanding, some of us become conflicted over whether we can believe at all. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the celebrated preacher at New York’s Riverside Church, was fond of telling of the day a distraught student exclaimed, "I don't believe in God!" Fosdick replied, "Tell me about this God you don't believe in; chances are I don't believe in that God either." In the 1920s, Fosdick predicted that we would continue to lose generation after generation of the brightest and best young people because they have the impression that they are expected to believe “just so” in order to be a true Christian.
"Yet images and ideas used to express the Divine by Christian mystics, theological thinkers, and in scripture are as many and varied as there are experiences of God. The Biblical writers use a rich pallet of metaphors and poetic language to point toward what is ultimately a mystery. The Divine is described as a potter, a cup (of cool water), a path, a safe place, a rock, a burning bush, an eagle, and a whirlwind – all wonderful metaphors that help us assign a variety of attributes to the Divine without being the exclusive last word.
"One of the most common images of God is as a father. Listening to many prayers and liturgies, one might think it was the only image of God in scripture. However, God is also imaged as a mother in Deuteronomy 32:18; "You forgot the God who gave you birth,” as "a woman in labor" in Isaiah 42:14, and as a comforting mother in Isaiah 66:13. Is God a mother? Yes. A father? Yes. A rock? Yes. A wind? Yes. Everything we use to refer to God is simply a limited, human effort to explain the unexplainable. To be aware of our language and its implications is a great exercise in thinking theologically – remembering that the language we use to describe the Divine will directly influence how we relate to the Divine."
To receive a complete copy of the text used for the session, please contact Pastor Marj at daytonfirstcong@gmail.com. It will be sent as an email attachment for your perusal as opposed to printing multiple pages, a stewardship practice. Because of copyright law, we are not able to make the materials available here. Another option would be to purchase a copy of Felten and Procter-Murphy's newly-released book, Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity from your local bookseller.
Questions to be considered in light of the video and readings:
Crossan asks four questions of 21st century Christians: What is the character of your God? What is the content of your faith? What is the function of your church? What is the purpose of your worship? Describe how you might have answered these questions as a child or young person compared to your understanding today.
Cobb discusses Omnipotence as an unbiblical concept that misrepresents the nature of the Divine. Describe the advantages of seeing God as a persuasive, relational power over the unbiblical notion of omnipotent, coercive power.
What are some of the alternatives to using even the word “God” to describe the Divine?
Describe Borg’s stages of pre-critical naïveté, critical thinking, and post-critical naïveté.
According to Varghese, what are some of the characteristics of “thinking theologically?”
How does the hope gained from thinking theologically different from simply thinking optimistically?
No comments:
Post a Comment