Ouch.

[aeditimi]

But nothing we didn't already know. Nearly half of Americans have switched religious affiliation/denomination. Oh, and that's not good news for the UMC.

With respect to my earlier thoughts about Easter, I read this in Borg and Crossan's The Last Week, which, about three pages from the end now, I highly recommend

Comments

death-rebirth

[anonymous]

There are two truths with which we must deal:
1. the nature of the universe is the cycle of death-rebirth. Seeds die to give birth to the shoot, childhood must give way to growth or teenage never happens, logic of dualism must perish in order to even contemplate relative values and individualism. Transformation is a process of death and rebirth, it is not the sole property or venue of God and Easter, it is everywhere we look, every season, every day, every realm of being.
2. The Powers that be, as Walter Wink calls them, are a house of cards held in place by the common belief of the masses, which, as soon as they are exposed, begin to crumble and lose their sting. Power cannot be taken unilaterally, it requires that the oppressed by into the oppression of the oppressor (a la Paulo Friere in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed). This is not a blaming of the victim but an exposition of the total contrivance of "power over".
The entirety of Jesus ministry is an exposing act of the false nature of the power "held" by the elite, wealthy, and pious. Jesus stands in direct opposition to submitting to power but rather than rail against it he transforms it by taking the power away from the oppressor. While this is dramatically represented by the death/resurrection story, it is no less a message on those days when the scripture tells of calling the woman in the synagog "daughter of Abraham" summoning the children, clensing and healing on innumerable occasions including the sabbath, and just about anything he did.
The more I study the less significant the actual crucifiction (so often mistaken as a redemptive blood offering to please Baal or Marduck or who knows whom). Mainly it seems to lessen the intensity of the radical natre of Jesus' message of death-rebirth in everything else he did.
Oh but I rant, eh??
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