Bonhoeffer on the Church

If my church were ever to do this I would be the first to run away from it.

“The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need…. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. In particular, our own church will have to take the field against the vices of hubris, power worship, envy, and humbug, as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, purity, trust, loyalty, constancy, patience, discipline, humility, contentment, and modesty. It must not underestimate the importance of human example… it s not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power.”

(Thanks to Inhabitatio Dei)

The Possible as a Gift

A quote from Eberhard Jüngel's essay "The world as possibility and actuality. The ontology of the doctrine of justification.", Theological Essays, Vol. I" (thanks to without authority). The article of which it forms a part was somewhat hard for me to get and what it implies needs to be worked out. It talks about the reversal of the commensensical notion (via Socrates) that actuality has a greater priority than possiblity.

"The gospel proclaims that the risen one lives as the crucified. And in this the death of Jesus comes to have its real meaning, namely, as the event of the love of God (Jn 3.16). Jesus' resurrection from the dead promises that we shall be made anew out of the nothingness of relationlessness, remade ex nihilo, if through faith in the creative Word of God we allow ourselves to participate in the love of God which occurs as the death of Jesus Christ. In this sense, Christian existence is existence out of nothingness, because it is all along the line existence out of the creative power of God who justifies."

Veiled Worship

I'm back from Kerala. Why God gave Kerala such beauty I don't know.
Now from the wonderful Ben Myers we have this article which starts of with what could be female pornographer's fantasy and moves on to contemporary worship.

"Perhaps all this can serve as a parable for the contemporary preference for experiential worship styles. Where every church service becomes the opportunity for a life-changing experience of the divine presence; where every song and sermon and prayer is designed to produce immediate emotional impact; where the whole Christian life is transformed into the pursuit of a “naked” experience of the divine – here, the final outcome can only be a profound and paralysing boredom. And for those subjected to such boredom, the only remaining spiritual desire is for a mysterious God, a God not merely naked and exposed, but clothed in ritual, sacrament, tradition."