A Fresh Perspective

When Jesus said that loving God and loving neighbor constitute the essence of God’s will, he clearly tied together the relationships we have with one another with our relationship to God. These two areas of relationship – with God and with each other – are so interlaced, so intricately woven together they cannot be separated. Of course, there are many folks who are not aware of this connection, but for those of us who are how we think about, imagine, and relate to God has a huge impact on how we relate to others.     Our passage in Luke 13 begins by pointing out that bad things happen all the time which God does not cause to happen. God is not poised over a zap button waiting for us to mess up. And yet Jesus warns, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as the unfortunate folks who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time due to no fault of their own.” Before I talk about what that means, first I want to say something about what it doesn’t mean. There...

Fred Craddock tells about playing hide-and-seek with his brothers and sister when he was a kid. He had the perfect hiding spot—under the steps of the porch. His sister searched everywhere—behind trees, in the barn, in the corncrib. She passed by him again and again. Fred said he was confident she would never find him. Then it hit him—she would never find him. So he stuck out a toe, she saw it and cried, “I see you. You’re it, you’re it.” Fred crawled out muttering, “Phooey, you found me.” What did Fred really want? To stay hidden? To be alone? He wanted what we all want—to be found. We all want to be in relationship. It’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s basic to our humanity. And when we are in touch with our deepest longing and need, we know that we long to be in relationship to God as the foundation for all other relationships. John’s Gospel has a lot to say about this divine-human relationship utilizing very intimate mystical language. In John 14:1-3 Jesus...

I believe biblical texts reflect degrees or levels of inspiration. Our ability to discern the redemptive value of a biblical text and to apply it as an instrument of transformation largely depends on our state of spiritual consciousness and our capacity for spiritual discernment. Frankly, it depends on whether or not we know God, whether or not we have had authentic God encounter.     Some biblical texts are simply regressive. Those texts, for example, that sanction divine violence are most likely projections of the community’s fears, insecurities, and blood thirst. When we read accounts of God ordering Israel to put an entire civilization under the ban, to kill men, women, children, animals, and destroy everything, we know that cannot possibly be the God of Jesus. Those of us who have encountered the God of Jesus know that the God who Jesus says loves his or her enemies would never order genocide. Some biblical texts are human projections that reflect humankind’s ...