: : : aaron ghiloni : : :

What if the person who won the 2000 presidential election was actually the president?

My friend Ronnie sent me this clip, in which Colbert shows surprising theological acumen. The theological bits start at about 2:45.

Just as God used words both to create the world and to give us commandments, we too use words for many different purposes. In fact, we use the same language to talk to each other and to talk to God. Can our everyday speech, then, be just as important as the words and prayers we hear from the pulpit? Eugene Peterson unequivocally says “Yes!”

Tell It Slant explores how Jesus used language — he was earthy, not abstract; metaphorical, not dogmatic. His was not a direct language of information or instruction but an indirect, oblique language requiring a participating imagination — “slant” language. In order to witness and teach accurately in Jesus’ name, then, it is important for us to use language the way he did.

Part 1 focuses on Jesus’ words in everyday contexts — his teachings to the crowds, the stories he told, his conversations with his disciples. Part 2 shifts the focus to Jesus’ prayers — the words he spoke to God the Father.

Peterson’s Tell It Slant promises to deepen our understanding of Jesus’ words, strengthen our awareness of language as a gift of God, and nurture our efforts to make all of our speech convey a blessing to others.

Peter Berger makes a provocative prediction: “If Christianity has a future it will be in the resurgence of Christian experience and faith in the lives of people who have never read a theological book.”

If Berger is right, than the way we approach Christian education must have a new shape. It will not do to simply hand people a study book or rehash what “experts” have said. Christian education must be lively and experiential. It must provoke wonder and stimulate curiosity.

Therefore, here are two things I believe about Christian education:

I believe Christian education must be interesting. Christian formation must connect with the practical concerns of daily life.

I believe Christian education must nurture holiness. The goal is living in ways that resemble the God whom we study.

What do you believe?

“Grace simply cannot be regarded as the private property of practising Christians. There still remains a large tract of missionary territory to be christianised in the depths of every christian and the pentecostal fire of the church smoulders in the heart of every ‘pagan’!”

- Edward Schillebeeckx, World and Church (1971).

“Although Dewey's book [Experience and Nature] is incredibly ill written, it seemed to me after several rereadings to have a feeling of intimacy with the inside of the cosmos that I found unequaled. So methought God would have spoken had He been inarticulate but keenly desirous to tell you how it was.”

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock 1874-1932, Vol. 2 (1942).

“Jesus, who was Israel’s son, reveals God’s power over history, but he does not do this in one or another form of rule or supremacy, such as kingship, priesthood, or even abstract human ideals. He does it rather in the form of impotence – the impotence of one who was crucified.”

Edward Schillebeeckx was asked, “Do you often meet your readers? Do you have any feed-back about your books?” Here is part of his reply:

“I get a few letters, but only a few, from people who damn me as the incarnation of pride, as Satan personified – the false teacher who wants to destroy the Church but is too much of a coward to leave it. It amazes me how strict orthodoxy so often leads to an unloving an unChristian attitude.”

(From God is New Each Moment)

Cornel West has a new book coming out this November. Thank God! Its tuneful title is Hope on a Tightrope. Here is a selection of interest this election season:

The word “evangelical” is the most confusing word in theology today. Based on most definitions, I would not say that I am an evangelical, because those definitions point to a fastidious set of ideas about the Bible, politics, and morality.

Here, however, is an attempt at a more appropriate definition of “evangelical” – one that I would be happy to live with.

“Evangelical” is not a noun, it is an adjective. It indicates an attitude, a disposition, towards something. Unfortunately, evangelical is often taken to mean a disposition towards the Bible; a zeal for a particularly narrow hermeneutics.

But “evangelical” should indicate a disposition shaped by Jesus. “Evangelical” is a Gospel word. It comes from euangelion. It is a good word about the good news. And that news is about a cross and a tomb – not a book.

“Evangelical” is not an identity. In fact, a claim “be evangelical” is a claim to find your identity in something other than Evangelicalism – to find identity in Jesus. “Evangelical” is word that points away from itself and towards Christ.