Marginal Christianity

Valerie Schultz  | Jan 26 2013 - 2:29pm | 2 comments   http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/help-thanks-sorry-wow For Christmas, my sister gave me the newest book from one of my favorite authors: Help, Thanks, Wow , by Anne Lamott. My favorite authors tend to be those who write things that I wish I’d written, and Anne Lamott’s many essays on motherhood and faith and struggle are definitely some of those things. Her most recent book ponders the three prayers we most often say to communicate with God, each of which can be reduced in its shortest form to one word: Help. Thanks. Wow. The book, at 102 pages, is as slim as its prayers, and just as packed with meaning. I read it in one glorious afternoon by a sunny window, pausing frequently to savor a particularly wonderful image or phrase. Anne Lamott is a gifted crafter of words and teller of truths, whose work often makes me stop to say "Wow" and "Thanks," sometimes simultaneously. As I read...

          How does the Holy Spirit transform us through our encountering the Bible?   This is an extended answer to the comment in the last post that we receive the “benefits” of reading the Bible indirectly.   By this, I mean that reading the Bible points us away from ourselves to the story of God’s purposes and the people God intends to use to implement those purposes, his missional community.   The Spirit calls the reader to participate ever more fully in the life of this community.   Bible Reading------------God’s purpose and people ------------Participation in commmunity It is through sharing life in such a community that we discover our gifts, our style of service, our individuality (which can never be discovered outside community), and build a relational network that the Spirit uses too make us into a tranformissional people. This process is at one and the same time irreducibly personal and corporate,...

          We saw in the last post that the Bible is one long sprawling story.   This has many implications for how we read the Bible.   It means, in the first place, that we do not read the Bible as if it is primarily a window .   One looks through a window to see what lies behind it.   To read the Bible this way is to take a primarily historical approach to it.   There are many invaluable gains from this approach to the Bible.   It has, however, spawned a tendency to reconstruct how things really were and who people really were (esp. Jesus) in contrast or contradiction to how the Bible presents those things and characterizes those people.   Often this has been done based on assumptions about what could and could not happen in history.   But even with less restrictive assumptions at work, the Bible leaves us with many gaps, questions, and presents its history in line with the practice of histor...

the notion of guns and gun control only leaves us with two options. this approach demands we choose sides. that there even has to be a side. i think this itself is the very issue at hand. guns are not simply about protecting one's own property or even the perversion of the myth of secure identity (i.e., i am protecting 'myself', myself as a separate entity from the whole - ultimately choosing th e myth of the individual over the community). But here is the obscenity of such a gesture/ideology: it will always force us to choose the 'tribe' of the nuclear family (i.e., those biologically/intrinsically valuable) over the general whole. knowledge has still become the centerpiece by which we define value. meaning that we feel a responsibility to defend the knowledge of one, two or more people on a smalle scale over the benefit of the whole. guns and even gun control (whether positive or negative) becomes about securing those we claim to love within the ...

          The Bible is the one long sprawling story about God’s dream for his creation and his arduous and creative efforts to reclaim and restore his wayward creatures and creation and finally bring both to his dream’s end for them.   The “chapters” of this story are: 1.     Creation (Genesis 1-2) 2.     Catastrophe (Genesis 3-11) 3.     Covenant (Genesis 12 – Malachi 4) 4.     Christ (Matthew – John) 5.     Church (Acts – Jude) 6.     Consummation (Revelation)     There are many subdivisions within each of these chapters. The best way to begin reading this story is to start with the c ameos of Creation (Genesis 1-2) and Consummation (Revelation 21-22).   In these two chapters we find God’s dream for creation laid out “in the beginning” and that dream pictured as fulfilled in Revelation’s last two chapter...

          What does the Bible say about itself?   I want to focus on three aspects of the Bible’s testimony to itself here.   Further posts on the Bible will pick up some other aspects.           The most obvious claim the Bible makes about itself is that it is God’s own Word, in short, God speaks in and through these human words to his creatures.   The writer of Hebrews says this about God’s word, and thus, the Bible: “ God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions” (4:12,13).   Through the Bible God’s Word creates and effects God’s plans and purpose, laying bare the “innards” of us humans.           The Bible bears witness to God’s Word in h...