Did Paul blow it?

For instance, Paul gave the Christian position regarding the structure of a Christian society thus: “In it there is no room for Greek and Jew [social distinction]; circumcised and uncircumcised [religious rite distinction], barbarian, Scythian [cultural distinction], slave, or free man [social, economic distinction]; Christ is everything and everywhere” (Col. 3:11, Moffatt). And in Gal 3:28 he adds: “There is no room for male and female [sex distinction]; you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That is the Christian position—clear, positive, sweeping. And in Peter’s speech at Pentecost he said: “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy”—note “and daughters”—(Acts·2:17, Moffatt).

But in 1 Cor. 14: 34 (Moffatt) Paul enjoins something else: “Women must keep quiet at gatherings of the church. They are not allowed to speak; … as the Law enjoins.” Note that he appeals to “the Law” for authority. Is he falling into the very thing he told the Galatians they were doing? It seems so. Every time Paul tried to put woman in a subordinate position, he appealed to the Old Testament, not to Jesus. Note: “but woman represents the supremacy of man. (Man was not made from woman, woman was made from man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for man.)” (1 Cor. 11:7–9, Moffatt); Here he turns back to the first creation for corroboration for his position—the first creation, not to the new creation in Jesus where “there is no room for male or female.” Again in 1 Tim. 2:12-14 (Moffatt) he says: “I allow no woman to teach or dictate to men, she must keep quiet. For Adam was created first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, it was Eve.” Here he turned to the first Adam for the sustaining of his position—the first Adam, not the Second Adam, Christ. His Christianity slipped a cog. And that slipping back to the pre-Christian has caused much confusion. Paul says that sometimes he was not inspired-he was speaking on his own. This was one of the times. And the ages have suffered because of it.—E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, 307

<idle musing>
You can not accuse E. Stanley Jones of being a progressive! Yet, he sees something wrong here and isn't afraid to say it: Paul blew it! Paul spoke out of himself and not at the leading of the Spirit!

Just an
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A sense of mission? Not so much…

Many Christians know little or nothing about personal guidance from God. They go from event to event and live a kind of hand-to-mouth spiritual existence—a spiritual and moral opportunism. They have no sense of working out a plan of life under God’s guidance. They have little or no sense of destiny, of mission.

This is true of the nation as well as the individual. When a nation loses its sense of mission, it is beginning to disintegrate. Someone asked President Eisenhower, before he was nominated for the Presidency, what was the greatest need of America, and he replied: “A sense of mission.” A very wise and penetrating reply. Personally I believe this sense of mission for America is to be true to the last line of the pledge of allegiance to the flag: “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This is the thing we have been raised up to do: to give “liberty and justice for all,” at home and abroad. This rules out all imperialisms—economic, social, political, military. We have been the proving ground of an idea—an economy of liberty and justice for all, apart from race and birth and religion and color and sex. We have been brought up to make the word “all” operative in all relationships at home and abroad. This is the mission of America. We must work it out—or perish. And if we don't work it out, we ought to perish—we will be a useless, amorphic mass of selfish people struggling for personal advantage. If we as a nation go out to dominate anyone economically, socially, politically, militarily, then our “name is mud.” “Ichabod”—“God has departed”—will be written on our banners, and angels will weep. For we who began by breaking with imperialism would end in setting up one of our own—the saddest ending to the greatest beginning in human history. One of our greatest needs is a call for a national day of prayer in which we will humbly bow our knees to get back as a nation “a sense of mission”—a sense that we are working out a divine destiny in the world.—E. Stanley Jones, Growing Spiritually, 274

<idle musing>
He wrote this in 1953. His fears have definitely been realized, haven't they?
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The greatest danger

I'm reading Abraham Joshua Heschel's great work, The Prophets. Came across this yesterday and it seems appropriate for our time, when outrageous evils are happening every day:

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, 2:64

Technological Progress…

Let us labor under no illusions. There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal. Technological progress creates more problems than it solves. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity. Important as their contributions may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions, is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.—Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man, 372

<idle musing>
Mind you, he wrote this in 1951! How true it has proven to be : (
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The Nazi myth recycled … as a MAGA myth!

I read Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth over the weekend. On the whole it's just a rehash of Eliade and Joseph Campbell, but with a good dose of Walter Burkert thrown in to make it more interesting. But, the final chapter had this tantalizing paragraph:

We are myth-making creatures and, during the twentieth century we saw some very destructive modern myths which have ended in massacre and genocide.… These destructive mythologies have been narrowly racial, ethnic, denominational and egotistic, an attempt to exalt the self by demonising the other. Any such myth has failed modernity…

Sound familiar? But she doesn't stop there. She suggests that

We cannot counter these bad myths with reason alone, because undiluted logos cannot deal with such deep-rooted, unexorcised fears, desires and neuroses. That is the role of an ethically and spiritually informed mythology. We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a ‘resource’. This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.—Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, 136–37

The social net and the gospel

I say we cannot preach it [the gospel] honestly, not because people might look at lack of community in our own lives and say, “You aren’t practicing what you are preaching,” but because, when we cannot offer community to people, we put them into a position where, by hearing the Gospel, they find themselves in an intolerable but hopeless situation. The Gospel challenges them to leave one life behind but does not offer a concrete road to a new life.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 300

<idle musing>
That's the final snippet from this book. I hope you enjoyed the book and were challenged by it. I know I was. Stay tuned (as they used to say) for what is next on this blog.
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Community!

What, singularly, are we missing today within Christianity that could make us credible to the world and to our own families? Community.… In the end people are as agnostic about faith, Christ and the church as they are about the experience of community. When there is a strong experience of community there is generally a strong faith.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 297

The real tragedy is…

Psychologist John Powell submits that there are only two potential tragedies in life, and dying young is not one of them.

These are the two potential tragedies: if we go through life and we do not love fully, and if we go through life and do not tell those we love that we love them.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 290

<idle musing>
Amen and amen! This truth should be emblazened on every parent's (especially) heart. Tell your kids you love them! And then live that love out. Tell your spouse you love them! And then live that love out.
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Real change needs to happen

The road to final victory on the issue of abortion is long, the task mammoth. Hearts need to change, relationships need to change, sexual patterns need to change, oppression needs to be recognized; and real villains and real victims must be more accurately named.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 266

When nobody shows up…

What kind of power may we seize upon to try to change this situation? Too many people, I am afraid, have placed their hopes in legal power, political power. The belief is that if we work hard enough we can get the laws changed, put abortionists on trial, close down abortion clinics…. And yet the only real solution is long-range. This battle, in the end, cannot be won legally and politically. Ultimately, more than laws, hearts need to be changed. Conversion is the only effective way of ultimately ending abortions. Abortion clinics will shut down when nobody shows up at their doors any more.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 264

"Normal" vs. the godly life

The human instinct is to define the normal by idiosyncratic preference and social consensus. We need to challenge this if religion is to have an agenda that includes celibacy, social justice or anything else which goes against what most people are in fact living.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 258

The demise of the common good

More important, though, the demise of hospitality has occurred because we have developed a sense of privacy and efficiency that militate against it.

Our culture is becoming ever more narcissistic and idiosyncratic, that is, more and more we have the attitude that things are our own. We speak of my space, my time, my family, my home, my community, my room, my stereo, my plans, my agenda, my friendships, my effectiveness, and even, in a way, of my church.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 235

Get up, dust yourself off!

As we get older the games, the bullying and the hurts become less physical, more psychological, more sophisticated. But one dynamic remains constant, most often we are not as hurt as we think. Invariably there is more self-pity than actual wound.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 214

True egalitarianism

What is the mind and heart of Christ? It is the acceptance of the fact that everyone is special and therefore all are equal. Nobody sits above the rest and nobody has a right to feel that he or she should sit above the rest. This is true for nations as well as for individuals.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 210

Mummify that beauty!

Like the ancient Egyptians, we attempt to mummify our youth and sexual attractiveness through contemporary forms of “embalming”: cosmetics, dyes, face lifts, pretense and lies about our age.

When we are fifty, sixty, seventy—or forty—and trying to be twenty, someone must challenge us: “Let go, for God’s sake! Be your age, it will be better then than it is now!”

Old age is hell for those who cling and want to be young at all costs. It can be peaceful and full of joys, if we are willing to receive its spirit.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 191

<idle musing>
As I near seventy, this is good advice. I've never been one to be overly concerned about physical appearance, but I confess that I have been a bit obsessed with staying in good physical condition. But, as I get older, my body doesn't recover as quickly as it used to. That's taken a bit of getting used to, but I'm learning to embrace it.

Those who know me, know that I've never been known for going slowly through life. But, I'm learning…
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No wall is strong enough!

By dying as he did, Christ shows that he loves us in such a way that he can descend into our private hells. His love is so empathetic and compassionate that it can penetrate all barriers that we construct out of hurt and fear and enter right into our despair and hopelessness.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 147

We need a theology that…

We need a theology that teaches us that God does not just give us one chance, but that every time we close a door he opens another one for us.

We need a theology that challenges us not to make mistakes, that takes sin seriously, but which tells us that when we sin, when we make mistakes, we are given the chance to take our place among the broken, among those whose lives are not perfect, the loved sinners, those for whom Christ came.

We need a theology which tells us that a second, third, fourth and fifth chance are just as valid as the first one.

We need a theology that tells us that mistakes are not forever, that they are not even for a lifetime, that time and grace wash clean, that nothing is irrevocable.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 145

But I've screwed it up too many times and too badly…

We have too much fear, in the end, of God. Ultimately we look at the scrambled egg, at our own mistakes and sins, and believe that the loss of a certain grace is irrevocable, that a mistake hangs us. Basically we do not believe that there is a second chance, let alone seventy-times-seven chances, that can be just as lifegiving as the first.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 144

Distraction is not a virtue!

Theologian Jan Walgrave commented that our present age constitutes a virtual conspiracy against the interior life. That is a gentle way of saying that, within our culture, distraction is normal, prayer and solitude are not. There is little that is contemplative within our culture and within our lives.

Why is this? We are not, by choice or ideology, a culture set against solitude, interiority and prayer. Nor are we, in my opinion, more malicious, pagan or afraid of interiority than past ages. Where we differ from the past is not so much in badness as in busyness, in hurriedness. We do not think contemplatively because we never quite get around to it.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 125

Leisure as virtue

David Steindl-Rast has commented that leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give to each instant of life the time it deserves.

That is a valuable insight, especially today when everywhere life seems dominated by the constraints of time. Always, it seems, there is not enough time. Our lives are dominated by pressure, the rat race, demands which are all-absorbing. The plant has to run and, by the time that is taken care of, there is no time or energy for anything else.—Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten among the Lilies: Learning to Love beyond the Fears, 115