"To depend on Jesus too much forfeits our ability to actually become like Jesus. To become like Jesus too much forfeits our ability to really depend on him."
What is the problem then? To truly encounter the living, embodied and relational Christ is to do so as one pursues full humanity. As humans we are prone to seek out cultural heroes that will replace our responsibility in the world. We project onto to them qualities, powers and superhuman strength that allows us to forfeit the strength that we as humans actually have for something that doesn't exist in order to avoid the difficult encounters that we as humans are requires to have in our strength. Our heroes exist as buffer zones between us and the Real. The Real wants us to realize that which we already have, potential bound up in the human race and to become fully human in order to discover that strength. The problem is - we don't want that, so we look to super-humans to do if for us.
In-between our incompetent humanity and super-humanity, there is a place that God calls us to called full humanity. So why don't we want to be there?
I think the problem is that we don't really want to encounter the "other" more than we encounter ourselves. We truly don't want to have a true encounter, we want the benefits of an encounter, but not all the comes with the encounter.
So the solution is and has been, to be fully human. To be fully human is to not depend on Christ so much that we cannot become like him, but also not be so much like him that we cannot depend upon him. Somehow there's a balance in the midst of that tension that we should be seeking to experience, though the journey there will never allow us to "finally arrive." I think the journey of holding the tension between the desire for transcendence and immanence is like a metronome and our wisdom grows as we cross the center of the metronome more frequently.
Christ's mission wasn't just to save us, but also to release us into what it means to be fully human as he became fully human after the resurrection. That longing to be fully human is the balance between transcendence and immanence. We forfeit that longing when we shortchange ourselves for only (or mostly) attaining the benefits of primarily transcendence or primarily immanence. Conservatives generally focus more on the benefits of transcendence (God's glory is everything) and Progressives tend to focus more on the benefits of immanence (Human Flourishing is everything). Holding a tension between the two for our experience in the world seems to be the best solution rather than prizing one more than the other.
So, the impulse to focus mostly on "God" can actually shortchange our ability to really worship him with all of us (embodied human experience) as Scripture guides us to do. Love of God and love of Neighbor are one and the same in the Greatest commandment
In-between our incompetent humanity and super-humanity, there is a place that God calls us to called full humanity. So why don't we want to be there?
I think the problem is that we don't really want to encounter the "other" more than we encounter ourselves. We truly don't want to have a true encounter, we want the benefits of an encounter, but not all the comes with the encounter.So the solution is and has been, to be fully human. To be fully human is to not depend on Christ so much that we cannot become like him, but also not be so much like him that we cannot depend upon him. Somehow there's a balance in the midst of that tension that we should be seeking to experience, though the journey there will never allow us to "finally arrive." I think the journey of holding the tension between the desire for transcendence and immanence is like a metronome and our wisdom grows as we cross the center of the metronome more frequently.
Christ's mission wasn't just to save us, but also to release us into what it means to be fully human as he became fully human after the resurrection. That longing to be fully human is the balance between transcendence and immanence. We forfeit that longing when we shortchange ourselves for only (or mostly) attaining the benefits of primarily transcendence or primarily immanence. Conservatives generally focus more on the benefits of transcendence (God's glory is everything) and Progressives tend to focus more on the benefits of immanence (Human Flourishing is everything). Holding a tension between the two for our experience in the world seems to be the best solution rather than prizing one more than the other.So, the impulse to focus mostly on "God" can actually shortchange our ability to really worship him with all of us (embodied human experience) as Scripture guides us to do. Love of God and love of Neighbor are one and the same in the Greatest commandment
No comments:
Post a Comment