While on our patriotic way to watch the fireworks yesterday evening, some friends and I came across burnt pieces of paper strewn on the ground. The piece I picked up was a page of the bible, 1 Timothy 3:11-5:21. Immediately, I thought this was a bold yet disrespectful and destructive act. I thought about moments this past year when I held disdain for the Bible because I was frustrated in my own lack of ability to read, understand and interpret it even after four years of training in hermeneutics. I thought about my Presbyterian upbringing when a high regard for scripture was instilled in my theology and my experience of God as a disappointment and breaker of promises on a cross-cultural internship. I thought about the Qur’an burning planned by a Florida church in 2010 and inter-religious strife. Then I wondered who the instigator could be and what they are trying to express. Now I wonder if there is place or a way to express disappointment in the Word and the community that preaches it constructively?
Hi Danielle, I wonder with you. Disappointment is a word I use a lot to describe my feelings. I think I am more disappointed in people, however, than I am in God. I am disappointed when the Word of God is distorted or frustrated through poor interpretation and misguided preaching. Since I did my theological studies in constructive theology, I was wondering about the last phrase in this blog. What does a constructive preaching of the Word look like to you? Could it be that a constructive theology one that tries to reconcile our experiences in life with our understanding of God?
ReplyDeleteI also like your last sentence. Although there is a grammatical ambiguity about it. Are you wanting to express dissappointment constructively? or are you dissappointed in constructive preaching? A question that your post bring to mind for me is: What do we expect out of our education? The more you know the less you know/you become painfully clear about how little you know. I think I experience a level of dissappointment with this reality, which is particularly prominent in theological and biblical studies. I find it immobilizing, given the evengelical christian community desires certainty, certainty is precisely what my education has certainly eliminated. Not my faith, no faith is grown and distilled in the face of doubt. But how do we fit ourselves back into "our" community with our newly gained knowledge and experiences, when the reality is that we don't fit, or at least not like what we used to. And how do we find where we fit when it seems clear that possibility has been destroyey somehow and we are doomed to perpetual exile/always being stangers...
ReplyDeleteThank you for your responses. In the last sentence of my post I was wanting to expresses disappointment constructively. I am wondering if there is a way to express disappointment in misguided preaching without burning bibles. My disappointment in the Word has to do with the incongruence I have discovered between my experiences and my understanding of God. To me a constructive theology would seek to reconcile these two. I have been struggling to reconcile experience with my understanding of God academically and mystically for some time and am at a loss. Gay Lynn, I would be very interested to hear about your studies in constructive theology and what you have discovered.
ReplyDeleteDannielle.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you share what exactly, broken promise God made?