Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 6b

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Chapter 6b:

Bishop Newbigin observes, "...denominations have been and are powerful, purposeful, and effective agencies of self-propagation."

On Christian (read: "human?") freedom he points out coerced belief is no belief at all; that acceptance of Christianity or of whatever needs to be done within a person's own time and space. It feels to me as if he's simply thinking out loud about what could be read as a "Christianized" government. Marian C., our discussion moderator said, "I am looking for a secular society with human values consistent with my Christian faith." Me, too!

For me, expressions like "Christian Coalition" instantly evoke visions of Fundamentalists from the Christian far-right conniving and scheming to inflict their particular proposals for a godly social order on everyone else, like it or not. (In a closely related vein, Rick G. reminded us of the Civil Rights movement's transformative effect on not only a "reluctant South," but on the rest of this country, too.) Here in San Diegan Southern California we have a big ecumenical multi-service social service agency that's been doing some effective and at times life-changing work, but it's comprised only of Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant local churches. There's also the requisite large Roman Catholic agency, as well as dozens of smaller groups, some ecumenical, a handful interfaith, and several formally affiliated with a particular denomination. But apropos of "bringing values to the heart of public policy," now that I've given you a spin on what's happening here, I'll say I believe it's a great idea.

His idea of "declericalized theology" resonates with another of my 10 challenges currently facing the church; Bishop Newbigin seems to be emphasizing the ordinary parishioner - also included in my idea - though I was intentionally thinking more about the non-professional lay leaders. And I was so embarrassed to read our author considers the situation (in some local churches) analogous to where the Reformers found themselves. From my experience most mainline churches definitely don't have well-educated laity and most of those persons in the pews don't care, either. One of the hallmarks of Reformation Christianity is supposed to be biblically and theologically well-educated laypersons...

Finally, he cites two very different style Christian communities "centered in the action of praise...that is literally 'out of this world' and is by that very fact able to speak to this world."

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 6

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Chapter 6: What must we be? The Call to the Church

Absolutely for sure I'll agree with Bishop Newbigin's describing the church's call, "to become corporately a sign, instrument, and foretaste of that sovereignty of the one true and living God over all nature, all nations, and all human lives." I could not have said it any better: the exhibition of the Kingdom of God to the world!

In Bishop Newbigin's clearly reminding us Jesus sends us and the Holy Spirit calls us into all the world, I found a warning for myself and the way I usually preach from the Bible and teach from the Bible emphasizing Jesus' birth on society's margins and his crucifixion outside the city gates between society's outcasts, his frequently associating with "others" and the not-like-us…

Yesterday [writing this during Summer of 2003] I went into a local retail store and they had tons of Christmas stuff, mostly decorating and gifting paraphernalia and ephemera, out for sale...and yesterday was August 7!!!!!

Rick G., who was a regular on our book threads, made another devastating observation:

Especially when I consider the alternative our culture is generating, in which upper middle class teens exclaim they will just die if they don't get their Tommy Hilfiger outfits (and mean it) and kids in the ghetto do die over Tommy Hilfiger outfits, in which people embrace consumer goods as THE source of their identity nowadays (and not because they've been brainwashed, but perhaps because we've failed…and isn't it a curious fact that all the original ad firm founders were preacher's kids!?).

I responded: "Perhaps because we've failed." Possibly so. As Christians and as the Church too often we try to find and live as if our identity found in something external to us and evident to others rather than in our being found "In Christ" - which in the world's terms essentially is invisible. The mayor (for a while) of the city I lived in (for a while) had an exceptionally conspicuously consumptive personal lifestyle and as mayor she advocated tons of corporate favoritism, often at the expense of her less-affluent constituency. Someone said to me, "She [the mayor] should know better: she's a PK!" People sometimes tell me I must be "a recent convert" because of my passion for the gospel. I can take that as compliment or as suggesting that people who've been in the church a long time or esp those who are "hereditary Christians" either have lost any fervor they'd ever had or maybe never had any?!

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 5b

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Chapter 5b:

Though for the most part, Bishop Newbigin's book has not been as engrossing to me as Professor Koyama, wow, I really liked chapter 5b! He says post-Enlightenment thought and behavior has trumped the old assumption that resources are finite and *some* of us have been acting as if resources of all kinds are infinite…hmmm…lots of familiar ideas, esp that any economy needs to be a mixed economy; he cites the need early on in industrialization and modernization for governmental intervention and even governmental controls to save people from the exploitative outcome of the purer forms of capitalism. He thinks capitalism and consumerism are the sin of covetousness, considers it "a desperately dangerous case of cancer in the body of human society." These days I'm beginning to agree, and not only because I'm living in southern California. Though his proposed alternative doesn't seem particularly realistic, either—but then Christianity's not about logic and realism.

Marian, our moderator asked:

"Should the image of Jesus Christ be in the central shrine of public life? Are we comfortable with this? Is Christianity better than other religions?...What do you think?"

Everyone who knows me [from these forums] probably has figured out I'm Barthian on this issue, so I'll start by saying asking if Christianity is "better than other religions" is like comparing mangos and avocados and then throwing in some rolled oats, because Christianity's not a religion in the common sense of the word "religion." One of the discussion participants asked, "If Christ is to be the central shrine of our culture, is it as service or as sovereignty? And if not Christ, who or what?" His question is my answer: if not Christ, who or what? Because some idea or icon or god or combination of many and/or all of those must be sovereign, since the people need a god…but without the God of Truth people and state both perish! I'll go back to something I think I wrote on Water Buffalo Theology, or maybe I didn't post it there, but lately I've sure been saying it a lot: whether or not a person - or a culture - claims Christ Sovereign Lord of All, Christ is Sovereign and Lord of All: Christus Pantocratur.

I absolutely agree Bishop Newbigin's not remotely talking about establishment of religion nor does he man a visible, physical - in Westminster language, a "sensible" - representation when he refers to "the image of Jesus Christ in the central shrine of public life."

How do we enthrone Jesus Christ in the public arena? By claiming our created-in-God image [...love, justice, community, *otherness and strangerness*, slowness, creativity...] by doing justice and mercy; by treating each person and all people as fully human, actively affirming and celebrating the Divine in them! I'd also hope a major part of the witness of the present-day church still would be "See how they love one another." So, I believe, we enthrone Jesus publicly and privately particularly with the quality of our friendships - Jesus' ultimate accolade to his companions and disciples was calling them "friends!"

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 5

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Chapter 5: What is to be Done? The Dialogue with Politics

5a:

On this California lazy summer afternoon, I'll affirm I'm also baptist, evangelical, reformed, catholic, pentecostal, and - I hope - above all, a disciple.

Page 107: "Neither for Luther nor for Calvin would it have appeared as anything but incomprehensible blasphemy to suggest that human behavior in the sphere of economics was outside the jurisdiction of theology."

Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "What must you do to be saved? Keep the commandments, sell all that you have and give it to the poor: forsake your gods, whether riches, property, a BMV, career or profession - or even your family - and follow the God of justice in whose image you are created; own that divine image by doing justice, loving righteousness, and walking humbly with your God."

There's no doubt being in Christ means not to own the God of Jesus Christ as yet another of "my" possessions, but rather to acknowledge it is God who in baptism possesses us and at many junctures of our lives tests our claim to the name "Christian." Many if not most of those are very public testings, opportunities again to choose between life and death.

On this thread Rick G. mentioned "…that distorted version…of the separation of church and state" which speaks to the non-establishment of religion: forever in this country religion(s) and politics have had what someone referred to as "institutional separation but functional interaction." As Rick said, when we don't like the politics a particular local church or church-body is advocating some of us usually are quick to decide church and politics (or church and any other area of public rather than private life) is inappropriate or plain wrong.

But onto a different direction: in my experience people usually begin attending church or decide to return to church because of spiritual hunger, not because they're interested in biblically-based and divinely-sanctioned social or political activism. They want to feel connected to their spiritual source, therefore all the meditation, contemplation, Taizé chants, incense, candle glow and labyrinths. People truthfully and sometimes desperately are looking for the wholeness they instinctively know they'll find in some kind of connectedness.

Back to Bishop Newbigin: as he observes, the dichotomy between spiritual and material isn't biblical at all and it's especially totally absent from the life of Jesus. I believe "incarnately" is the way we need to read the entire Bible, God's Word always is an incarnate, living, "still-speaking" Word of abundant life.

It's well-known the church at times began over-spiritualizing Jesus' life and teachings in reaction to extraordinarily excessive and idolatrous carnal indulgences of neighboring or local cultures, and on page 97 Newbigin wisely reminds us "there is much in the Bible about what may be called the interior dimension of human existence," while at the bottom of the same page he observes, "Faith, obedience, repentance, and love…are embodied in…jurisprudence, public health, education, welfare and economic policy."

I'll wrap up this post by quoting page 99:

"The king reigns from the tree." "...the victory of God under the sign of the cross."

Superlatively expressed!

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 4c

Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture on Amazon

Sort of Chapter 4c, but this actually amounts to a few more thoughts on 4b:

Bishop Newbigin think and writes from the standpoints of faith and values! Agreed – as he previously wrote – as Christians it's inexpedient, unscriptural and actually impossible for us to separate private and public life: earlier I quoted Miguel De La Torre's saying he has a "public relationship with Jesus," and of course, Jesus had a public relationship with his Father-God when he lived and walked on this earth as one of us. Marian C. clearly stated the difference between conocer and saber in the Spanish language, and without saying anything new our author describes how it is we can know each other in relationship, though never is that knowledge ever complete, however much we may long to be completely known just as we fear being totally known.

I appreciate his description of Trinitarian relationship; it's a more earthbound description of the Trinity's cosmic Perichoresis! "Incarnation" and "Trinity" as the junction where we begin understanding "reality as a whole" is good Reformed theology, as well!

Finally, on page 94, I love his words, "The church exists to testify that there is someone, that he has spoken, and that we can begin to know his purpose and to direct our personal and public lives by it." And, in the last paragraph, "…the ultimate explanation of things is found in the creating, sustaining, judging, and redeeming work of a personal God…" A loud "Amen" and I'll add "God is 'still-speaking!'"

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 4b

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Here's Chapter 4b:

Marian, once again our book discussion moderator, wrote:

"What I think is foolishness, a stumbling block, and just plain anathema to our culture is the Christian claim that we are not made for ourselves, we do not live for ourselves and we do not die for ourselves."

I responded:

Exactly! When you previously asked, "Just what is it about our faith that is 'foolishness' to our culture?" So now I'll say that peculiar foolishness is evident in our proclaiming and worshiping the foolishness, the indignity of our God crucified; we proclaim the reality of resurrection; we aspire to living in the weakness, vulnerability, shame and dishonor of servanthood rather than existing in the comfort and triumph of being served. This gets back to the un-churched and de-churched considering Christianity yet another possible selection on the smorgasbord of spiritual delights: it's all about "me and me," and maybe peripherally about "I" but not about an "I" truly connected to any other "I." Our God crucified, dead - and risen - isn't about prosperity thinking, isn't about conspicuous achievement; it's unreasonable and illogical and unscientific.

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 4

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Chapter 4: What can we know? The Dialogue with Science

For reading and discussion purposes, we subdivided chapters 4, 5 and 6, so I'll post them in subdivided order.

Here's chapter 4a:

The chapter title, What Can We Know is provocative…when I was at UMass/Boston they offered a course in epistemological sociology called "The Sociology of Knowledge and Ignorance!" Who gets to know what when, how much that do they get to know, and (maybe especially) why do some people not get to know?

One of the reasons I was been slow in getting back to the original discussion site to post (is because I'm becoming in the image of our Slow God? - no, not!) is I didn't have many thoughts on 4a, though I much appreciated everyone else's ideas, especially since I have virtually no background in the natural or physical sciences (which probably is why I was idea-impoverished).

It's no coincidence that God's first recorded creative Word - by the Priestly Pentateuch author, the latest Pentateuch source - was a Word of illuminating, revealing and transforming light. In our discussion, Fred asked, "What else is contained with these words of the Word?" Although the question's not clear to me, with my lack of a scientific background I need to approach the text theologically and I believe the orderliness and careful organization of "P"'s creation account came first when Genesis got compiled in order to show us a God of order and of purpose, telos and very distinctively not a God of randomness, chaos, un-design and disorder.

Back a few posts: I've found many of the unchurched and dechurched often approach Christianity as mysticism, as a contemplative way, and as simply one more-or-less random choice in the contemporary smorgasbord of spiritual choices, not only avoiding the Bible at all costs but avoiding anything resembling social or political activism as well, probably because they won't read and therefore don't interpret the Bible. These book discussions are particularly helpful to me since I'm constantly quandering as to what language to speak in conversation with newly-churched people.

awesomely evocative poetic twentieth-century hymnody:

God, Who Stretched the Spangled Heavens, by Catherine Cameron, 1967; © 1967 by Hope Publishing Company

1. God, who stretched the spangled heavens infinite in time and place,
Flung the suns in burning radiance through the silent fields of space;
We, thy children, in thy likeness, share inventive powers with thee;
Great Creator, still creating, teach us what we yet may be.

2. We have ventured worlds undreamed of since the childhood of our race;
Known the ecstasy of winging through untraveled realms of space;
Probed the secrets of the atom, yielding unimagined power,
Facing us with life's destruction or our most triumphant hour.

3. As thy far horizon beckons, Father, give us strength to be
Children of creative purpose, serving others, honoring thee,
Till our dreams are rich with meaning, each endeavor, thy design;
Great Creator, lead us onward till our work is one with thine.

New Century Hymnal, No. 556, alt.

Great God, Our Source, © by George Utech:

1. Great God, our source and Lord of space,
O Force of all by whose sheer power
The primal fires that flared and raged were struck, blazed on and still are made:
Oh, save us, Lord, at this fierce hour from threatening fires that we have laid.

2. Ah! God of fire, incarnate Flame,
Through Christ in whom your love has burned,
And burns the way for our dark pace on cosmic routes within us turned:
Lead us beyond atomic night; Guide now in hope our broken race.

3. Lord of the atom, we praise your might,
Expressed in terrifying light;
Before us rise the flames as pyres, or bursts of love--they blind our sight:
Help us, our Lord, O help us see new forms of peace through suffering fires.

Lutheran Book of Worship, No. 466, alt.

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 3

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Chapter 3: The Word in the World

I love the title of this chapter, "The Word in the World," because Word in the World is Who Christ is and the Church is supposed to be!

In this chapter's second paragraph Bishop Newbigin says where it's at for me:

missionaries already organize their corporate life around a story that is told in a book and is continually reenacted by word and sacramental action in their liturgy.

And, of course around the Person that Book and those liturgies reveal and proclaim. Is Newbigin saying the mission and witness of the local church is "where all the action is?" Partly, I think, but by extension he's also saying those church members' lives outside in the world are sacraments that mediate the Christ.

Marian C., the discussion moderator said, "But I do think it's fair to say that he claims that the authority of Scripture rests in the community organized around that Scripture." Yes, that is what I hear him saying, again in many more words than necessary! We Christians are a "people of the book," though of course with the Reformers I agree Christ is above all and in all. Sometimes I differ with the Reformers' considering the preached word to be the Word of God: I'm more likely to consider the lived word – walking that talk – to equate the Christ.

On page 42 Bishop Newbigin writes, "And if the sacred book has been desacralized and placed firmly within the world of objective fact…so also the sacred society, the church, is desacralized."

Page 50: "Is it possible to read Scripture in any other way than as the people we are?" No, not, because scripture itself is an incarnate, "enfleshed" Word, a text both "strange" and "other," and I appreciate his cautioning us about the danger of emphasizing strangeness or otherness to the exclusion of one of them. So true there's no place whatsoever for resurrection within any secular plausibility structures. I think we can get a better picture by more than one person telling the same story and maybe by listening to a few outsiders' versions of the same insider story.

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 2

Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture on Amazon

Facts and/or values…Westminster Larger Catechism: Our chief and highest end…to glorify God and fully to enjoy God forever!

More and more I realize I've actually and actively been integrating gospel values into my life and making those values more factual. I think "a whole life well lived…a relationship with God" definitely would be joyful living rather than happiness, though I wouldn't exclude the live possibility of happiness: it's that *joy* has added dimensions and greater density! However, Rick, one of our book thread regulars, referred to the "milk and honey earthiness" of happiness and called happiness a "point of entry," and I appreciate that a lot, because sometimes joy simply is not sufficiently earthbound for the way we need to live every day. Besides, milk and honey is a sign of the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven, the realization of the Reign of God!

Page 41: "…the one by whose will and purpose all things exist…has acted and spoken…in order to reveal and effect his purpose and to call us to respond in love and obedience." But I've been thinking, too. About our glorifying God and enjoying God being about our being connected and living daily in the connectedness we have to the glory as children of God we possess by faith in Christ.

Semi-aside:...agreed...at times I don't know how to answer people who tell me they perceive no difference whatsoever between Christians and non Christians, when they ask me, "What's the advantage of being a Christian?" Is there a personal advantage, or is it rather a gift we have received that we then give to others? My standard theological answer, we are a people who live under the cross, truly presupposes a fair amount of theological finesse and invites discussion most people neither want nor can they easily grasp, so I need something else, but something else that's still biblical.

On one of my other blogs I posted this song © by Graham Kendrick:

Knowing You

1. All I once held dear, built my life upon;
all this world reveres and wars to own.
All I once thought gain I have counted loss, spent and worthless now compared to this.

Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the best, You're my joy, my righteousness,
and I love You, Lord.

2. Now my heart's desire is to know You more,
to be found in You, and known as Yours.
To possess by faith what I could not earn, all surpassing gift of righteousness.

Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the best, You're my joy, my righteousness,
and I love You, Lord.

3. Oh, to know the power of Your risen life
and to know You in Your sufferings.
To become like You in Your death, my Lord, so with You to live and never die.

Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You, there is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the best, You're my joy, my righteousness,
and I love You, Lord.

Foolishness to the Greeks Chapter 1

During Summer 2003, on the old United Church of Christ forums (which are supposed to reappear in a new version and a different format) we had a second online book discussion about living in mission; this time we talked about Bishop Lesslie Newbigin's Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, which was full of challenges and replete with hope for the church's redemptively engaging the world. In his preface the author describes the chapters in this book as "a somewhat expanded version of the Warfield Lectures" he gave at Princeton Theological Seminary in March 1984.

Chapter 1: Post-Enlightenment Culture as a Missionary Problem

Here are a pair of great questions a couple of discussion participants asked forthwith:

• "Is it possible…we have actually surrendered the claim of Jesus Christ to be Lord of the world? Does he truly reign for us only over the realm of the personal?"
• "Is it not possible for our personal choices to effect changes in the public world?"

Yes, our personal, individual choices frequently effect changes in the more-public arenas of the world – sometimes as the result of a long process and at times almost immediately. It's also clear that the sum of those small, private choices and decisions often is synergistic, with the outcome being far, far greater than the simple addition of the discrete inputs. But the Bible challenges and – I would hope – compels us to consider and claim for ourselves Jesus' assertion he is Lord of all. Because of this, as we are baptized into Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and henceforth live under the cross in judgment and also in grace, the Incarnate Word challenges and obliges each of us to take the extremely scary, open-ended risk of going beyond the comfort of "Jesus, Lover of my soul…my Jesus, I love Thee, because Thou art mine." Really! That uncomfortable (to say the least) action potentially can transform not only us but also the world outside of us and beyond the safe perimeters of our comfort zones.

Next I'll ask if "we" is the corporate, royal and deferential "we?" I'll dare assume it's the "you and me" we. I wonder if I'm too tame and cautious in confessing Jesus Lord of all even with other Christians. Bishop Newbigin mentions several Christ-icons, including Christus Pantocratur / Christus Cosmocratur. He says we're living in a pagan rather than a secular culture, and though I'd never considered that fact, I believe he's correct. It's a sure thing that here in year 2003 [fast-forwarding to 2004, same thing] Jesus Christ has become one of a plethora of possible choices and very few mainline-type Christians are into being thought of as exclusive and particular Christians.

Among the cautions and counsels Bishop Newbigin gave to all of us missionary-evangelists are warnings I know I need to begin taking more seriously:

• my version of Christianity is an "adapted gospel," shaped by my total life experiences;
• a person's Muttersprach is "the language of the home and heart" and the Word that transformed Paul of Tarsus' life - and heart - was a vernacular word!
• We must learn to speak not only the formal language but the dialect, speak the culture of those we evangelize.

And from what Newbigin says, it looks as if...

• I need to learn to speak "pagan" rather than the "Christianese" most of us theologian-types speak so fluently!
• Finally, I need to become much more aware of the syncretic elements in my own Christianity, and I say that especially as a person who has lived in and who's (literally) conversant with the symbols of a fairly broad range of cultures and styles.

Water Buffalo Theology: Chapter 18

This is the final post of some of my ideas from our online discussion of Water Buffalo Theology by Kosuke Koyama on Amazon during Spring of 2003 on the old United Church of Christ forums. Kosuke Koyama taught for a while at Union Theology Seminary; Water Buffalo Theology is liberation theology, ecological theology and missiology, as well as an offering in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue.

Chapter 18: Three Modes of Christian Presence

This is the final chapter, though there's an epilogue consisting of Kosuke Koyama's Pilgrimage in Mission.

On to chapter 18. I love his using the word "attachment!" God's "decisive and irreversible attachment!" What hope for all of us! Christianity as a "noisy" faith…to think I've been *trying* so hard to become a little more contemplative.

Three modes of Christian presence. A hidden presence, a sacramental presence to the world. Suffering because we're involved with others, involved with the other; suffering because we're involved in neighborology! Participating in the "glory of the crucified Lord"—the same Paul of Tarsus also talks about "the glory of the children of God!" And isn't our glory as God's offspring also a crucified glory and a risen glory?

Too often I'm still finding myself comforted by other than Christ, almost keeping pace with my unchurched and marginally churched neighbors and friends. I was delighted Professor Koyama reminded us of the Luther quote, "subject to none; subject to all." That's good to remember when life's not going my way.

I'll close by quoting:
In this eschatological hour, we are called to share the pathos of God, God's pathos toward all scattered things which are held together in the glory of the crucified Lord. Amen!!!!!

Water Buffalo Theology: Chapter 17

Water Buffalo Theology by Kosuke Koyama on Amazon

Chapter 17: Toward a Crucified Mind

Finally almost home! This is another great chapter, full of lots more ideas I need: encountering persons rather than ideas; learning a person's not a theory or an idea...as missionaries we need to live "in the complexity of history" once again part of our being in God's image! This is sensational: in the bulleted list at the start of the chapter he says, Appreciation of the complexity of history can control theological inflation. Rather than the idea of a person walking in the idea of history, a living person in history's concreteness. I think this whole book has been changing me, believe it or not!

Missiology is tamable but missionary is untamable! Martin Luther and "domesticating" God into a tame household god: as people in the image of God, why do we (I) sometimes let ourselves (me) be "domesticated?" Unity of message and messenger?

Regarding super-arrogance and super-ignorance, some time ago I gave up even pretending to try any kind of conversation with some other Christian but as someone on these boards said, by acting that way likely I'm being a fundamentalist in my own right, too.

Water Buffalo Theology: Chapter 16

Water Buffalo Theology by Kosuke Koyama on Amazon

Chapter 16: Is Christ Divided?

Kosuke Koyama's asking, "Was Luther baptized for you...was Wesley baptized for you" is so revealing regarding the way people identify themselves by denominational labels rather than by the name "Christian," indicating not only an identity but actual belonging=possession!? Possession by the UCC, the ELCA, the UMC? Wouldn't that mean being owned, possessed by an institutional structure? At least this chapter is more directly accessible than the previous ones!

Professor Koyama seems not to think very highly of denominationalism and at times I don't think highly of denominationalism, either.

Do Methodist Christians study Wesley's theology, do Lutheran Christians study Luther's theology? Many Christians study neither Bible nor theology and most members of most local churches aren't remotely biblically or theologically literate and instead pride themselves on "inherited" Christianity and sometimes even affirm their polity as their foundation! In other words, "The confessions and doctrines which are the historical basis of these world confessional organizations" aren't "living realities" in the lives of the majority of people in these confessional "families." But I also feel different from and divided from (against, at times?) fundamentalist Christianity; I'd like to protect our unique contribution and "save" people from that distortion of the gospel fundamentalist Christianity plainly is.

"...an organization built around that truth..." gets back to my earlier asking whether the organic Body of the Risen Christ can coexist with the institutional church.

Water Buffalo Theology: Chapter 15

Water Buffalo Theology by Kosuke Koyama on Amazon

Chapter 15: Tokyo and Jerusalem

Professor Kosuke Koyama says God's "first and fundamental gift" to us is "the constant awareness that we are under the judgment of the Word of God," (and in Jesus' death and resurrection, God's judgment leads to abundant life that doesn't decay or degrade). What a chapter about institutions, icons, institutional icons, "religious living," arrogant assumptions and idolatry! Jeremiah's situation is an fitting parallel to Koyama's other examples about Tokyo and of course about us since, as he says, the Japanese people couldn't remotely imagine anything other than being protected by the institution of the imperial system and the emperor. The religion of the Jerusalem Temple was imperial religion that sought to keep God in God's place and imagined being able to keep our God, the God we know to be free and elusive, completely responsive to human entreaty and reactive to human whim.

Safety, shelter, and all of the related static, programmable and unfree, unelusive comforts can be so enticing, but they're neither hot nor cool in any authentic sense at all - it seems to me in order to be "hot" or "cool" any entity needs to be alive! But it's also clear institutions frequently assume a life and a dynamic of their own, but not one that breathes, grieves, rejoices or encounters or interacts with much of anything or anyone else. Right now I'm listening to Steely Dan: the last call to do your shopping at the last mall! (note: I'm editing and cleaning up earlier blog posts for live links, etc. during late May 2015, and malls are so on their way out, lots already have closed, and soon there will be a single standing literal "last mall.") Back to James (and Jesus, of course) and the total folly of putting trust - "faith" - in transitory, ephemeral - sometimes even imaginary - things that ultimately will decay.

Jeremiah attacked "the deceptive theology hanging around" the Jerusalem temple. So we're getting ready for the next chapter that's about our treasured denominations in all their wonderful uniqueness and importance, about the theology and even the idolatry that often surrounds them.

But how does this connect with Thai Buddhists? Or with the institution of Thai Buddhism?