.. it is formally and theologically incorrect to say “Jesus is God,” as most Christians glibly do and then need to “prove.” Jesus is instead a third something—the perfect union of “very God” with “very man.”For the truly orthodox Christian, the Trinity must be “God,” and Jesus can only be understood inside that Eternal Embrace.
.. Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; whereas the Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time. In later centuries, the church lost this mystical understanding in favor of fast-food, dualistic Christianity that was easier for the average parish believer to comprehend. We pushed Jesus, and we lost Christ.
Richard Rohr: History of Focusing on Shame and Guilt
When Christians defined Jesus in a small way—as a mere problem solver for sin—we soon became preoccupied with sin itself, which is a largely negative foundation. We became blind to much else going on in this world except sin and its effects, which became preoccupations of most monks and reformers. One well- known Protestant reformer actually spoke of “total depravity” to characterize the human situation; another spoke of human nature as “a pile of manure covered with the snow of Christ.” With such a negative anthropology and without inherent human dignity, it is very hard for even a good theology to succeed. Grace can only build on—and perfect—nature; it cannot undo it, says Catholic theology. We must start where the Bible begins in Genesis 1: “It was good, it was good . . . it was very good” (Genesis 1:10-31).
Yet many Christian leaders and churches focus on shame and guilt, atonement and reparation, as if we were children frightened of an abusive father. Is there no greater meaning to our individual lives and history than to be chastened, corrected, and “saved” by God? Is there no implanted hope and goodness to first celebrate? The starting point of religion and life cannot be a huge problem. If we start with original sin (beginning with Genesis 3 rather than Genesis 1), our worldview is scarcity rather than abundance.
.. Grace is the consummate threat to all self-hatred.
.. Rather than being taught that we can and should follow Jesus as “partners in his great triumphal procession” (2 Corinthians 2:14), we were told to be grateful spectators and admirers of what he once did. Instead of a totally “Inclusive Savior” we made Jesus into an object of exclusive and exclusionary worship.
Newlyweds Sacrifice One Precious Possession to Buy Christmas Present
The tale tells of two newlyweds, poor as church mice but madly in love, who, unbeknownst to each other, sell the one precious thing each owns to buy a Christmas present for the other. He pawns his valuable antique pocket watch to buy her combs for her beautiful long red hair; she shaves her head and sells the hair in order to buy him a chain for his watch. On Christmas Eve the newlyweds stare at each other blankly, almost numb with shock, trying to compute the meaning of the “useless” presents they have just exchanged.
The Opposition Is Never the Problem
Einstein seems to have been on to this insight in his famous dictum that a problem can never be solved at the level at which it is created.
.. (1) the enemy is never the problem but the opportunity; (2) the problem will never be solved through eliminating or silencing the opposition but by learning to hold the tension of the opposites and launch them in a new direction.