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This post was mentioned on Twitter by cmoody91: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=891 I Know i tweeted this earlier, but this video is very important and beautiful. some good thoughts….
It’s amazing how much substance can be packed into a 10 minute web interview. Loved the tidbit on the artificial “idealized self” we project onto facebook…..so true.
Peter, I’ve dabbled in your thinking for a couple of years, always with a bit of suspicion. Not some suspicion of heresy in a Christianity context, but in a reality context; that adopting post-modern language gave Christian dogma clever flair, but in the end, only rearranged deck chairs. Your sense of Christ splitting the opening between God and not-God “did it” for me. It allowed me to see your reach for reality not just Christianity.
I’ve never doubted your intention, nor am I implying that your heresy was never true. I’m just saying that this is the first time I was able to see it (recognizing my part of the seeing equation) and seeing it adds to my hope that we can get past Christianity as a means of following Christ.
I feel hopeful and very grateful to you whenever I hear you talk about the discrepancies that can so often exist between what people say about themselves and what they actually do in their lives. It’s uncomfortable but it needs raising. Thanks for being courageous enough to do so. The world could be so much better than this crock of shit we’re perpetuating!
Loved this interview, especially the last several minutes where you talk about “not being a good liberal.” It would be interesting — and I’m sure you’ve already thought about it — to think about this “new” (that is new insofar as it eschews dogmatism) Pauline understanding of being the site where God becomes incarnate apropos to the notion of repetition, of repeating a certain revolutionary gesture non-identically. Your mention of refusing a certain type of liberal legalistic moralism in the ethical teachings of Christ seems indicative of that to me.
I look forward to seeing the Insurrection in Boston in a few months!
That life-giving realm within the mystery of paradoxes is exactly what I came to realize through the practice of Centering Prayer and Thich Nhat Hanh’s brand of mindful living. It’s so exciting and fascinating to hear you expand on this beautiful and powerful theme the way you do. You’re very brave in exploring an intimacy with Christ that requires us to confront the monsters we love the most; selfishness, apathy, and our tribal urge to become over-identified with sets of beliefs that separate us from unconditional love.
Hi, really appreciated the ideas in this video.. in particular near the end where it was mentioned that Jesus wasn’t the first to preach what he preached… and not the first to have had miracles attributed to him.
I’d really like to dig more into this?? Could someone give me some links/resources that’d be worth me looking into?
Cos really at the moment, I have no reason to believe that to be true at all?? The closest I have heard before is that stories that were closely aligned with the story of Jesus existed before his time.. o.O
Although I’m sympathetic to a lot of what you’re saying, it seems to me that there’s an interesting disjunction, in that there are some areas in which you’re very happy to be liminal and live with the uncertainty of apophaticism (e.g. in your descriptions of truth at both ends of the pole when it comes to speech about God), and yet you swing very quickly from that to a hard-line assertion that the “truth” about a person is emphatically *not* about what they’re like in their private life (e.g. Hitler giving out cupcakes) but about what they do in public. Surely it’s the case that this doesn’t quite add up – the truth about me is *both* those things and more, because it arises in the cracks and disconsonances, all the reasons *why* I might not manage to walk the talk. My failures and fallings-short aren’t just empty: it’s in them that the really interesting questions can be engaged with, the questions of queer becoming and provisionality. I’d be interested to know more about why you’re so content to use this kind of trope for talk about God, but less so when it comes to issues of human experience.
Marcus Borg is someone who makes ideas like these very accessible- not just intellectually but “existentially” as well. For instance, he argues that whether you hold the miracles to be actual or not, doesn’t matter as much as understanding what the gospel writer is trying to convey: a meaning that is to big for the finite language available to him. So if existentially, the miracles are important to you, you’ll find Borg respectful.
That said, a question that becomes quite powerful is this: If the “celebrities” of Jesus’s day were attributed with “miracle stuff” as a matter of form, what was it about this inconsequential Jewish peasant named Jesus that struck people to such a depth, that they would confer to Him attributes of “celebrity”? Lots of people will faun over power and riches; so what was it that Jesus had, that drew so many people to him? And, what was he satisfying in people that couldn’t be satisfied by celebrity?
umm….wouldn’t paul be one of those “after the split” characters? I buy what your saying here about participating in the cross and ressurection but not the “jesus in the gap” bit. Paul is ever bit after the fact of Jesus as Moses is before, so quoting pauls writings wont really do…
‘If you say you know God and don’t love, you’re a liar.’ (7 mins 29 secs) You say you’ve got a good source. How come you don’t tell us what that is? Can you tell us now?
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:06 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by cmoody91: http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=891 I Know i tweeted this earlier, but this video is very important and beautiful. some good thoughts….
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:18 am
Awesome. Loved the Hitler story. Thanks for your work Pete!
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:02 pm
It’s amazing how much substance can be packed into a 10 minute web interview. Loved the tidbit on the artificial “idealized self” we project onto facebook…..so true.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Peter, I’ve dabbled in your thinking for a couple of years, always with a bit of suspicion. Not some suspicion of heresy in a Christianity context, but in a reality context; that adopting post-modern language gave Christian dogma clever flair, but in the end, only rearranged deck chairs. Your sense of Christ splitting the opening between God and not-God “did it” for me. It allowed me to see your reach for reality not just Christianity.
I’ve never doubted your intention, nor am I implying that your heresy was never true. I’m just saying that this is the first time I was able to see it (recognizing my part of the seeing equation) and seeing it adds to my hope that we can get past Christianity as a means of following Christ.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
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February 3rd, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I feel hopeful and very grateful to you whenever I hear you talk about the discrepancies that can so often exist between what people say about themselves and what they actually do in their lives. It’s uncomfortable but it needs raising. Thanks for being courageous enough to do so. The world could be so much better than this crock of shit we’re perpetuating!
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Loved this interview, especially the last several minutes where you talk about “not being a good liberal.” It would be interesting — and I’m sure you’ve already thought about it — to think about this “new” (that is new insofar as it eschews dogmatism) Pauline understanding of being the site where God becomes incarnate apropos to the notion of repetition, of repeating a certain revolutionary gesture non-identically. Your mention of refusing a certain type of liberal legalistic moralism in the ethical teachings of Christ seems indicative of that to me.
I look forward to seeing the Insurrection in Boston in a few months!
February 4th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Peter,
That life-giving realm within the mystery of paradoxes is exactly what I came to realize through the practice of Centering Prayer and Thich Nhat Hanh’s brand of mindful living. It’s so exciting and fascinating to hear you expand on this beautiful and powerful theme the way you do. You’re very brave in exploring an intimacy with Christ that requires us to confront the monsters we love the most; selfishness, apathy, and our tribal urge to become over-identified with sets of beliefs that separate us from unconditional love.
Keep at it man.
Your brother,
caleb
P.S. Here’s a link to my blog: http://www.loveisfierce.blogspot.com
February 4th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
I really do love this video but I’ve got to make another, admittedly pretty superficial, remark about it…Mean skirting boards really naff me off!
February 4th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Hey, brother. Loved this interview. Great stuff giving us even more background into what drives that brain of yours. Keep pressing in.
Shalom
February 5th, 2010 at 1:37 am
Hi, really appreciated the ideas in this video.. in particular near the end where it was mentioned that Jesus wasn’t the first to preach what he preached… and not the first to have had miracles attributed to him.
I’d really like to dig more into this?? Could someone give me some links/resources that’d be worth me looking into?
Cos really at the moment, I have no reason to believe that to be true at all?? The closest I have heard before is that stories that were closely aligned with the story of Jesus existed before his time.. o.O
February 5th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Although I’m sympathetic to a lot of what you’re saying, it seems to me that there’s an interesting disjunction, in that there are some areas in which you’re very happy to be liminal and live with the uncertainty of apophaticism (e.g. in your descriptions of truth at both ends of the pole when it comes to speech about God), and yet you swing very quickly from that to a hard-line assertion that the “truth” about a person is emphatically *not* about what they’re like in their private life (e.g. Hitler giving out cupcakes) but about what they do in public. Surely it’s the case that this doesn’t quite add up – the truth about me is *both* those things and more, because it arises in the cracks and disconsonances, all the reasons *why* I might not manage to walk the talk. My failures and fallings-short aren’t just empty: it’s in them that the really interesting questions can be engaged with, the questions of queer becoming and provisionality. I’d be interested to know more about why you’re so content to use this kind of trope for talk about God, but less so when it comes to issues of human experience.
February 5th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Jack,
Marcus Borg is someone who makes ideas like these very accessible- not just intellectually but “existentially” as well. For instance, he argues that whether you hold the miracles to be actual or not, doesn’t matter as much as understanding what the gospel writer is trying to convey: a meaning that is to big for the finite language available to him. So if existentially, the miracles are important to you, you’ll find Borg respectful.
That said, a question that becomes quite powerful is this: If the “celebrities” of Jesus’s day were attributed with “miracle stuff” as a matter of form, what was it about this inconsequential Jewish peasant named Jesus that struck people to such a depth, that they would confer to Him attributes of “celebrity”? Lots of people will faun over power and riches; so what was it that Jesus had, that drew so many people to him? And, what was he satisfying in people that couldn’t be satisfied by celebrity?
February 6th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
In this brief interview you affirmed again that being authentic is about truly participating and living a life that affirms your beliefs.
February 12th, 2010 at 11:46 am
umm….wouldn’t paul be one of those “after the split” characters? I buy what your saying here about participating in the cross and ressurection but not the “jesus in the gap” bit. Paul is ever bit after the fact of Jesus as Moses is before, so quoting pauls writings wont really do…
April 5th, 2010 at 3:09 am
‘If you say you know God and don’t love, you’re a liar.’ (7 mins 29 secs) You say you’ve got a good source. How come you don’t tell us what that is? Can you tell us now?