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06 November 2006

Comments

seeward

Great thoughts Barry and spot on from where I sit! I ma reminded of Moses' prayer in Exodus after the Israelites built and worshiped a golden calf. He prays that God strike him out of the book of life instead of the people. That is a kind of servant leadership that doesn't make me want to puke!

Geoff Broughton

"Power, is at the heart of a lot of this I think. Our fascination, our obsession even, with the power of God lies at the root. God cannot love if God cannot be vulnerable declares Moltmann, too much attention on power has blinded us to the reality that in order for God to truly be love, God must ultimately be about weakness and vulnerability, not power and might. And we, in turn, who follow after this God of power, don't know how to mediate and negotiate our weakness and vulnerability, except to overcome it with power. I'm waffling, so I'll stop."

... hardly any waffle here, but on the edge of something quite profound. The struggle for power in Christian leaders, churches and history, should be enough to help us reflect more deeply on our theological ideas about power. But it doesn't. And it ties in with your blog on crowdsourcing... which instinctively asks us to go beyond the old "power to the people" as important as this might be as first step.

Once again it it is those with so little (the genuinely powerless people of the the two-thirds world) who are able to show us with so much, how to engage with a more vulnerable God. I have just procurred Caputo and Vattimo, who I'm sure will flesh out the philosophical dimensions of this for me. But it is living and working among those without power that I begin to see Phil 2:4 and the like come to life.

As a white, western male with some institutional leadership and education, I need to be reminded that I am like those numbered among those Jesus identified as following AFTER the sex-workers and tax collectors into the Kingdom. I hard pill to swallow.

Thinking about the weakest and more vulnerable moments of my life I see the most shitty-and-God-infused events, relationships and times... not in a God-helped-me-thru-my-troubles-and-gave-me-the-victory kinda way. But almost like God is attracted to my weaknees and vulnerability. I like to think of God saying to Haggard... okay, now we can really get down to business... get to know Me as I am, without all this hype and bullshit. Thats the kind of God I'm attracted to, anyway. Everyone likes to quote Bohnoeffer's "community of sinners before a community of saints" but for most churches its pure rhetoric.

Now im waffling.

rose

well...it's pretty basic really...
as I see it the difference between
those who are religious and those
who are spiritual is this..

religious people justify their actions and spiritual people take
personal responsibility for whatever they have done....

My people have been spiritual
of tens of thousands of years....

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