The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

Some of you may know that for the last three years I’ve had only one functioning eye. Let me corner you at a party and I’ll tell you all about it.  The takeaway is simple. One can adapt. To look to my right I have to turn my head a lot further. Stretching exercises are a necessity, not an option. Especially when driving, one can’t be too careful about what’s coming up on the blind side.    Fortunately, right before losing the sight in one eye I had cataract surgery, and thus artificially overcame the myopia which had long necessitated that I wear glasses. And yet, like almost all of my fellow humans, I still have a particular form of myopia. It comes from the shape of our mind rather than that of our lenses, and makes it hard for us to take seriously even a future we can clearly see.  Many in my generation despised the efforts of Hal Lindsey and his ilk to scare us into faith through apocalyptic visions of the future. We thought Bob Dylan’s idea that a  Hard Rai...

  It is hard to imagine Christianity without God. But how do we know God in 2023? Some 2000 years ago God rescued God’s image among humans in first century Israel by restoring the image of God in humanity through the Incarnation. The inhumanity of humans in their treatment of one another had completely obscured image of the the loving God who created us in God’s image. Only the restoration of humanity could and can restore human faith in God.  And that is what God incarnate in Jesus did, from the beginning of his ministry to its end.  Humanity, despite our efforts,  isn’t something any of us can possess in ourselves. it exists only through processes of mutual humanization. Adam became complete only when they became a social creature, and ever since God placed in their hands the task of creating new humans, our humanity has existed only in a social context, between us and not just within us. We either grant it to each other or we all lose our humanity altogether....

The are four ways for humans to relate to transcendence, or God, or ultimate reality. One is through myth; participation in a narrative  that draws together the world experienced through the humans senses and reality beyond the grasp of human senses. Some Christians dislike the term “myth” because the Greek “mythos” in the New Testament is often wrongly translated into the English “myth.” This is an instance where the translators of the KJV had right. Paul means by the word “fables,” as is clear in context. But myths are the furthest thing from fables, because they often tell the truth when facts fall short. The second way of relating personally to ultimate reality the is through mysticism and the release of the ego from its self-limiting embrace of immanence. (see above)  A much vaunted third way, serving God by serving serving humanity, may prove unsatisfactory except in the context of either myth or mysticism, just as the forth, intellectual engagement with metaphysics, may...