Brain McLaren suggests that we who live in the West may be living in an Echo Chamber where it is difficult to “listen to the voice of others.” One solution to this potential difficulty is to get out of the Echo Chamber by reading and thinking about how folks in other parts of the world think and write. The following article is a great start toward that goal.

A UNIVERSAL CORE?
by Sherman YL Kuek, OSL
Sherman is an itinerant minister and an Adjunct Lecturer in Christian Theology at Seminari Theoloji Malaysia (STM). He spends much of his time journeying with his friends in reflecting on faith, life, and culture in a profoundly theological and yet simple way. Sherman blogs on www.ShermanKuek.net.

In speaking of contextualisation, there are (rather simplistically) two trends of thought:

1) The gospel consists of a “static universal core”, a series of articulations which is time insensitive and perennially unchanging. The contextualisation project is simply about enfleshing this core with a cultural facade for the facilitation of communication and understanding. The core, essentially, does not change.

2) The gospel consists of a “dynamic universal core”, a series of articulations which is time sensitive and perennially changing with the development of our theological understanding. The contextualisation project, whilst being about the cultural expression of this “dynamic universal core”, (more…)

The world is shifting as we write. It is second by second changing around us. We all live in a story but is it the story that we should be living in? Do we need to make a shift in that story? Yep! Shift Happens. Watch the video below and marvel at the shifting times. What story are you going to make a shift in?

I am beginning a weekly Bible study on the book of Revelation. You can sign up here.

Revelation is as much a challenge to the comfortable within their society as it is comfort for those whose commitment has brought them into tension with the host society of this present evil age. It is a challenge and protest as well as comfort and encouragement.

Prophecy “experts” like Jack van Impe, Hal Lindsey, and the recent Left Behind series by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye with their mode of interpretation which looks at the meaning of Revelation as it applies to international politics and dosmestic policies have, in my opinion, misguided readers of this book for decades.

I will attempt to “decode the visions” of Revelation with a bit more sanity. I hope you will join us for this journey.

Rick and Toni are friends of mine from recent years. I spent three years in a Doctor of Ministry program with Rick. Recently, Toni’s cancer returned and she is in treatment. Rick keeps his friends up-to-date about Toni’s condition. The following is a recent one. After you read it, pause for a moment and pray for Rick and Toni, members of God’s family living in his story with the pressures of this present age.

Life is full of interruptions, inconveniences, unexpected scenarios, and dreaded situations. This includes everything from flat tires, stomach flu, to tax time in April.

What category does recurring breast cancer fall into?

It is definitely a major interruption, especially when it comes to Toni’s profession as a second grade school teacher . . . medical appointments, traveling to Illinois, missing time from working with her students, etc.. Furthermore, Toni has described having breast cancer as an “annoying inconvenience,” forcing you to make major changes and decisions in your life that you would otherwise never confront and attempt to live with.

Her diagnosis was not a totally unexpected scenario because Toni and I both knew that breast cancer does return in some cases. We just thought it would not happen to her.

To say this is a “dreaded situation” is an understatement. You can just imagine for yourself. But that’s just the problem!

One’s imagination has a way of conjuring up mental images and emotions that can instill despair and fear. For example, at the top of the list you find the fear of chemotherapy, sickness, physical pain, financial ruin, and death (resulting in your spouse becoming a “lonely” widow). Toni and I have discussed these multiple “imaginations” and their burglarious aim upon our peace and joy.

One thing we are learning again is that the imagination gone unchecked is poison to the mind and emotions, taking you to places you need not go or conjuring up “what ifs” that may never become reality. These mental meanderings have reminded us of what the apostle Paul wrote about concerning a form of “warfare” that takes place on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level. For more on this, see “Imaginations” and taking every thought captive to Christ in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (21st Century King James Version).

Interruption, inconvenience, unexpected, dreaded. . . all bring to mind another word: intrusion.

Recurring breast cancer is an intruder, infiltrating the body by replicating mutated cells until it seizes total control of the entire body and then shuts it down. An intruder: one with criminal intent, trespasser, interloper, invader, infiltrator, burglar, housebreaker, thief, and prowler. In other words, an intruder seeks to enter your life in ways that will change you, taking you to places you rather not go. And in this case, changing your life in destructive ways and taking you to undesirable destinations. Even chemotherapy acts like an intruder (When Toni read this post, she called chemotherapy the “intrusion infusion”).

Intrusion. If you think about it, in some respect the gospel is an intrusion. Jesus: the Intruder upon our human condition.

How so? I could wax, perhaps eloquently, about this topic ad nauseam, so I will limit it to one comment here.

Some argue that the Jesus of America is simply a cultural imagining of our own creation to fit our western and materialistic worldview and lifestyle. This Jesus exists to serve our own ends, and not the other way around. And sadly, this is the kind of Jesus that has been propagated and proclaimed in many of the churches throughout our country—a blond, blue-eyed, sugar daddy, genie-in-the-sky Jesus who exists to grant our every wish.

But I would contend that the Jesus described in the Bible is just the opposite. He is more of a counter-cultural personality than one who simply endorses the dominant culture. Jesus is the ultimate “intruder” into our personal lives. His intent is to enter our lives in ways that will change us, taking us to places we would rather not go. His intrusion leads to letting go of an old way of life that we desperately seek to control and opens us to live a new way of Life that is ultimately out of our control. This is what the Bible calls, “good news.”

Imagine that.

Rick

Want a good read? Want to see how folks act and react to the Christian message of the Resurrection? Here is an article written by N. T. Wright for washingtonpost.com. Read the short article and then read comments. It’s an education in itself. Everyone thinks they are right!

It is easy and dangerous to distort the telling of the story of Jesus. Within American Conservative Christianity we have come to think of Jesus in one of two ways. First, an embodiment of divinity like a computer avatar rather than the unique incarnate son. We think of his death as an example of great sacrifice and his resurrection becomes a way of thinking and talking about God’s continuing work in the present world. Second, we think in a dualistic way. Jesus is someone who is from the outside of our world, a superman of sorts who has come from another sphere to tell us that our true home is someplace else, namely heaven. His coming was to teach us how to follow him to that distant and unearthly destination.

There is something wrong with that picture. Neither way of thinking comes close to the Story of Jesus as presented in the Gospels of the New Testament. American Conservative Christianity, served up on a regular basis in America and exported to the global world, simply ignores what the Bible actually says about Jesus in favor another story that has been created out of bits and pieces of perception and refracted through various biblical passage which misreads the text of the Biblical Story.

This brand of Christianity passes itself off as authentic because it believes the items that have come to be thought of as orthodox, namely incarnation, atonement, resurrection, spirit, and second coming. But, what has happen is that all these beliefs have been joined together into the wrong narrative sorta like a kid who is drawing a “draw by numbers” picture but decides to follow another sequence rather than following the numbers. The result of this activity: of not following the right sequence, is drawing a picture other than the one intended. If you put all the elements of Conservative Christianity within a story of a deist God who sent his superman son to undergo some redemptive violence in order to satisfy his primal vengeance, then raise this dead body to life in order to show followers a way back to heaven and away from earth only to come again and snatch them away from earth as earth finally rolls toward rotting in hell. If that is the narrative that one sets incarnation, atonement, resurrection, spirit, and second coming into, then that production produces a violently distorted parody of biblical Christianity. Alas, this is the story of American Conservative Christianity.

So What Biblical Story?
A fresh way of understanding the Story of Scripture is to understand it as a story where humankind, though created good, became radically flawed by sin. Into this flawed world, Jesus came as the long awaited King of the Jews, who themselves had been the redemptive promise of God for some two thousands years. Jesus came to do what Israel had failed to do. Jesus took on the weight of sin and exhausted it, not so those following him could escape this world because it was bad or evil, but because of his resurrection could become part of the project of new creation, a new heaven and earth, or one might say a new garden. This project started after the first created beings chose to follow themselves and not God. The second coming then, is not a day in which Jesus will snatch away his bride from this evil earth and take them to heaven forever, but a time when the rule of Jesus which was already established in his first coming: birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, will finally be established in peace and justice in a transformed heaven and earth. It is this Biblical narrative that should replace the present conservative Christian narrative, so that this narrative can make a fresh impact on the world in this present time. N. T. Wright was influencial in these thoughts.