IT IS TIME - in fact it is long overdue - to update my header message. I already changed it once when I reached what seems to have been some sort of settlement on the whole Trinity issue. At that point, I still really recognised that the church had created some sort of hidden modalism risk. Christian apologists (and I have little time for Christian apologetics apart from occasionally calling out their frequent missteps) can go on as long as they want about "three persons, one being", but they seem to fail to see that this faulty logic still makes both them and others skip along quickly to saying things like "God, he...". That still bugs me, but not as much. Maybe part of the reason is that both Trinitarians and Biblical Unitarians unwaveringly consider that I must be "from the other side" because I take issue with where both sides' arguments fall short. So maybe I'm out of loyalty on that one and maybe I just got tired of it. Anyway, my frequent posting on how to translate Yahweh, Adonai and Kyrios has made me realise there is quite a puzzling separation now between the header text and the content of many of my posts.
So, out with the old:
123: How do you get from one God to a three-in-One God? How do you relate to a God like that? Is it important that the Father and the Son are not confused? How much of what I believe is church tradition? Here are snippets of my journey, which to my greatest surprise has stumbled over some answers.
So, out with the old:
And in with the new:
The Church is struggling to be relevant in many parts of the west and church numbers are in decline. She senses afresh the need to act in a living expression of God’s love for a broken world, to reach out and not suck in. But some of her language is stuck in the 16th century, creating distance between her and the peoples she is trying to embrace…
Note, this may now of course create some puzzlement for older posts which will now display the new header. Tant pis. What can we do but look forward?
Blessings. J :)
What do you mean to say by the header phrase "to reach out and not suck in"?
ReplyDeleteGood question! "Reaching out" is pretty well established, both in and out church parlance. The sucking in is the opposite. It is a microcosm world that distances its members from the surrounding community - worse, by seeking to detach individuals from their current communities folk can be convinced that they need to conform: speak the lingo, dance the dance for full acceptance in the new church that is more interested in swelling its numbers than really impacting the outside world with love, kindness and truth that Jesus, our founder, embodied.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting discussion that would be connected to this idea is the "Insider Movement". Have you heard of it?