Reading Journal 2024: Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood Author: Gary Paulsen
There are a handful of books that I would call formative when it comes to my love of reading as a young child. Hatchet was one of those books.
What was it about Hatchet that captured my imagination? The adventure? The survival? A few years back when my son had to read it for his English class, reaquainting myself with the story left me thinking that it was connection that I felt with this young boy, captured at least in inspiration from Paulsen’s own life story, that endeared me to it.
Back in 2021, Paulsen released this memoir. I could now read his story. Sadly, he passed away soon after its release, leaving only one more book to release in his name. Fittingly, it would seem, a book that has been advertised as Hatchet on the ocean. A book that brings this inspiration full cirucle. For me, it would be this memoir that gives his long career its appropriate context, and for me, it helped me to unerstand why I felt that coinnection to his stories as a young child. Not because my story is similar, but because he understood what it was to be a child looking in at the world from the outisde, unable to articulate the stuff in his head in a way that would make sense and be understood. Likewise, I was someone who found freedom in my discovery of books, of story, who’s life was marked by my own version of the “librarian” who handed me my notebook and pencil. I might trade love for the woods for a love of culture, but in truth, what informs Paulsen’s story is a young boy escaped to the woods so as to find his way back into the world with a greater sense of his own place in it. I connected deeply all those years ago to Paulsen’s journey from finding it hard to connect with people but finding friendship with the creatures. A connection that allowed him to connect the crueler parts of nature with the violence he saw and experienced in the world.
What’s interesting too, about thinking back to my son’s reading assignment, is how much of his own story I can see in the pages of this memoir as well. A young boy having seen and experienced things that he could not adequately express or describe to his new Canadian home. A young kid whom, in those early years, often found himself imagining disappearing into the woods and off the grid, a young kid who’s room is still adorned with pictures of wolves. A young kid who struggled with school, who found some familiarity in the concept of the trades, who was handed by some the sugggestion of the military. All parts of Paulsen’s story that I think would be an equal connection for him.
There are those books that are less about artistic merit and more about connection and inspiration. This is one of them. Perhaps most inspiring is the fact that he finished the story of his childhood at eighty years old. A reminer that its never too late for any of us to understand where it is we come from, to understand who it is we are.
Film Journal 2024: Bob Marley: One Love Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green
A rough and uneven first half finds its footing in the final 40 minutes. I think part of the issue is that it struggles early on to figure out what kind of film it wants to be and how to tell what is a bit of a sprawling story. We get misplaced flashbacks, and the potential to focus on the civil unrest paired with the decision to ultimately keep our attention firmly and directly on Marley’s progression and the song writing. It doesn’t help that the compelling aspects of the story is the stuff that surrounds Marley, including the wider Jamaican culture, and where we only get nods to its lingering presence, the vast majority of the first half is spent simply moving Marley’s career from point a to point b.
Marley’s story is most interesting once it approaches the climatic moment, which definitely benefits the back half of the film. That’s where we start getting the richer character development stuff and relationship drama, along with some more cinematic choices.
The spirit of the movement is there though, and it’s a message the feels timely in terms of the different political tensions right now around the world.
I will add, my theater experience was interesting. There were a lot of young people, which was somewhat surprising, and a mix of fascination and restlessness, including some hostilities. I heard one person after the viewing suggest that they needed to apply Marley’s message to that circumstance. If a film can evoke that, that’s certainly worth something.
Film Journal 2024: Madame Web Directed by S.J. Clarkson
I keep waiting for the cynicism to die, but alas, here we are. Another fringe Marvel film left having to dig itself out of a pre-dug hole before it even releases. Sunk before it even had a chance to swim, and not likely to find its way above water after its release either.
For my money, this is a fair degree better than the cynicism would have you believe, thanks in large part to an enjoyable and endearing performance by Johnson, some good chemistry, and the decision to keep things relatively simple. If this thing had a chance, I think it would serve a younger (and it does ever younger), female audience quite well.
The nearly non-existent villain is its biggest weakness, but thankfully he barely gets any screen time, so that kind of balances out. Its slightly uneven too when it comes to the dialogue, which does make the decision to go for simplicity weigh on the parts that need to establish the larger story. We see this mostly in the third act when it needs to bring all the threads together. But where it works is when Johnson is on screen trying to figure things out, and that is most of the film.
Suggested to me a blend of Blue Beetle and Captain Marvel, just dialed back. It has some nice thematic resonances that play through the film, book-ending it with an sense of purpose and message. And I also enjoyed how they employed Madame Web’s powers on a visual level.
Didn’t regret taking a chance on this one. It’s a solid middle grade outing that had me engaged and interested, which is what I hoped for.
Reading Journal 2024: The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels Author: Beth Lincoln
It’s definitely fun, quirky, even cheeky when it comes to its use of the dictionary and word play. And for all the ways it caters to its upbeat and carefree nature, it also takes on some big ideas. It explores that intersection between free will and determined- are we who the world determines us to be, or do we become who we determine ourselves to be. It takes on the nature of language and words- does the dictionary define what words must mean, or does it capture what they mean in their common usage. And wherein, then, is language and words free to change and grow and evolve with time and context. Further yet, as words and language change, what sort of window does this create for the societies which give these words their present meaning and usage (it is here where the book delves into the specifics of gender roles and identity, for example)
And yes, this is a book written for teens. I did wonder at times whether an adult writing from their own vantage point and context but reflecting the voice of a younger generation might be able to adequately detach themselves from imposing their own definitions and understanding of words into a context not their own. Which would of course beg the question of the role of influence in the realm of social formation. Where the book is at its best is when it is striving to establish a universal foundation that can apply in a timeless sense. There are moments when it seems to lose sight of this. But for the most part I think it does a good job of striking that balance,
Full disclosure. Mysteries and who-dunnits are not my favorite genre. I generally steer away from them. This is, beyond the bigger ideas of its premise, a straight up mystery and who-dunnit. If that’s your cup of tea this will likely resonate more for you than it did for me,
Reading Journal 2024: Stride Towards Freedom: The Montgomery Story Author: Martin Luther King, Jr.
“One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self-criticism.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Stride Toward Freedom)
For as prominant a figure as Martin Luther King, Jr. was (and is), he writes with the sure handed and grounded nature of someone who simply speaks from lived experience. You can feel the articulate and academic nature of his words dripping off the page as he tells his story of Montgomery, and yet this personal memoir, equally the story of a movement of people, of a collective experience and a whole voice, breathes like a candid and personable conversation. As though he was sitting across the room on the couch sipping coffee out of your mug and musing about the state of the world. Which then somehow would spin in to the state of himself. The state of oureslves.
I loved it. More than that I was inpsired by it. I was educated by it. I was changed by it. Having recently visited the South, and partituclarly the streets of Montgomery, King helped to bring the story of these streets alive.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this story is the path King travelled back to Montgomery. Sensing a moment, he sacrificed much of his life to be where he felt God wanted him to be- in the midst of this moment doing what he can to contribute. Driven by a passion for his southern roots, he would become not just a Pastor of a Church, but of a city, and of a movement. A movement that, through much anguish, would come to define one of his most committed convictions, that of the way of non-violence.
The chapter on non-violence is worth the price of this book alone. He notes it as a pilgrimage, citing the voices that shaped him through a process of learning and discovery (Thoreau, Rauschenbusch, Gandhi, Brightman, DeWolf, Muste, Mueler, Chalmers, Niebuhr, Johnson, and of course his religious conviction, Jesus). As he writes, “The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.” Or his recolection of the famous saying, “A religion that ends with the individual, ends.” For King, he hinged his methodology and practice on the simple truth that it is better, always better, to be a recipient of violence than the inflicter of it. If one can note problems and potential evils within pacificism, non-violence remains the lesser of two evils. This philsophy, in the powerful final third of this book, eventually bears witness in the fruit of this movement in Montgomery. Without this philosophy, the movement likely would have died in the same streets tread by those protesting the oppresssion of segregation.
For King, “a religiion true to its nature must also be concerned about man’s social condition.” Without this concern, a relgion becomes a “one way road” between those who have power and the God they evoke in order to wield such power. What keeps us beholden to God, something the powerless know better than anyone, is our concern for the powerless and the systems that keep them enslaved, the cross-section of that two way street. “Religion”, King insists, deals with “both earth and heaven.” God “still works through history His wonders to perform… pull(ing) down mountains of evil and level hilltops of injustice.” The hard truth of this fact, which we can see in the movement that emerges from the streets of Montgomery, is that God works through those “willing to subsstitute tired feet for tired souls.” What happened in Montgomery has the undeniable mark of God’s hand for King, and yet the two way street finds the strenght of the people who formed this movement pointing him to God, while seeing God in this movement points him to the people.
It remains such a privilege to have visited these streets recently. The story Montgomery tells remains as important today as it was in Kings day. This book is equally timeless. It is a model, a patterned discourse that can teach us what it looks like to note injustice, to care about injustice, and to do something about injustice. More so, its a powerful critique of dead faith, helping to breathe new life into a religious conviction, a religious truth, that demands hands and feet.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8
“I allow the question to surface, if only for a moment, “What is God?” Not “who” but “what”? What are You, Lord? What is this Reality that transcends it all and yet graciously chooses to meet with us? “They shall see God.” What shall they see?” – Darrell Johnson (The Beatitudes)
👉 “You cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” Exodus 33:20 👉 He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me” (John 12:44-45); He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:8-9) 👉 “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” Johm 16:16 👉 “Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?” The King will answer and say to them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even to the least of them, you did it to Me.” Matthew 25:37-40 👉 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8
Reflecting on the most recent episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast, titled The Season of Virtue.
They point out that an oft neglected aspect of the season of Lent is the number 40. Without this number we miss the story that the scriptures are trying to tell.
40 can be measured differently (days, months, years, generations), but where it surfaces always connotes, for the biblical writers and readers, the notion of preparation and anticipation. It is the result of measuring things in sixes (again, in ancient numerology) rather than 7’s, which would denote completion/ perfection/fulfillment.
We see this in: The 6 days of creation. The flood narrative Both times Moses goes up the mountain The wilderness motif (including Elijah) When Goliath comes out and awaits the one would take him on The scouting in Joshua before the promised land The reigns of David and Solomon The time given to Ninevah in Jonah The genealogy of the Gospels The time between the resurrection and ascension Pentecost The reign of Evil in Revelation
Just to name a few.
The hosts point out that the motif of anticipation and preparation can carry a duel focus for the biblical authors which is based on the two times Moses goes up the mountain. The first time Moses goes up is in positive anticipation and preparation. Where the people failed to prepare and anticipate, Moses goes back up for 40 days in prayer and fasting (repentance on behalf of or as a mediator for) the people. Given how this is applied to Jesus, Jesus is then positioned as a mediator in this same sense.
Why is this important? Because it becomes extremely evident that the Biblical writers/authors lived and breathed this pattern of expectation and particpation. Moses, Elijah, David, they are all depicted within the framework of sixes. There are three key places where the number 7 is applied, narratively speaking- to God in creation, to Jesus in his resurrection, and to the promise of new creation. All of which function together.
And where the 40 days is concerned, the duel nature (the positive pronouncement/the call to repentance) informs how we approach Lent in practice, and how we frame that in light of Jesus being its completion.
Reading Journal 2024: Paul and Time: Life in the Temporality of Christ Author: L. Ann Jervis
Theological shifts begin with someone willing to challenge the status quo. Paul Barclay is a great example of this, pioneering a necessary shift in how we understand the terms Law, grace and faith within the social customs of the ancient world. Here he pens a forward for L. Ann Jervis’ Paul and Time: Life in the Temporality of Christ, a book that, not unironically, challenges some of the conceptions of a larger body of work Barclay is often included in, that being the concept of the “overlap of the ages”. Much work has been done to place the story of Jesus back within its Jewish context, one outcome of this being an increased emphasis on the notion that Jesus actually accomplished something on the cross according to the fulfillment of that story’s expectations (which can ultimately be summed up in the defeat of Sin and Death, the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and the inaugeration of the new creation). Thus, the language of the overlap of the ages has been employed to describe a world in which Jesus’ accomplishment is true, and yet at the same we still see and experience the effects of Sin and Death in the world. What many modern scholars have suggested is, Jewish custom thought in terms of the ages (this present age and the age to come), and so did Paul, one of the primary thinkers and writers of a post-resurrection world. Therefore, it is assumed that Paul thought in terms of the overlap of the ages. Where he insists that Jesus’ resurrection actually accomplished what the grander story was waiting for, he also sees this present age still persisting.
But, Jervis insists, we don’t actually find Paul speaking about ages anywhere. Which creates a problem for our assumptions about the overlap of the ages.
So what does Jervis believe Paul, and his Jewish Tradition, actually thought? This is where the book’s title comes into play. She believes that Paul actually thought in terms of time- death time and life time. Or capital Death time and Life time to denote its rulers.
As Barclay summarizes in his introuction, “The suffering, mortality, and temptation experienced by the believer are not, for Jervis, a sign of living still partially in the “present evil age.” All such things have been enveloped, embraced, and taken over into the life of God in Christ and are therefore experienced by the believer “in Christ” and not in spite of him…Paul simply marches off the map of our human conceptuality of time; if we domesticate him to fit our concepts, then we have failed to appreciate how radical he is.”
Barclay also goes on to formulate this into a question: “If, as Jervis memorably puts it, for those in Christ death is not fatal, how is this to be believed, hoped, and practiced in a community that is shaped by such good news?”
Now, a caveat to Jervis’ assertion that Paul never actually speaks about the concept of the ages- he also doesn’t speak of the concept of time. However, Jervis insists that the concept of time fits with Paul’s view, or is assumed by it, far more succinctly and logically than the concept of the ages, particularly because the concept Paul does deal with is life (and death). She writes,
“Life and time are metonymies, for one without the other is impossible; to conceive or experience one is to conceive or experience the other. Death, on the other hand, is the destroyer of life and of time. To speak of death is to speak of the opposite of time.”
If time is indeed inherent to Paul’s thought process and convicitions regarding life, in particular how we conceieves Jesus to relate to matters of life and death, then the other thing Jervis suggests is that it becomes pertinent for modern readers of Paul to note that we al bring our own conceptions of time to the table, which may or may not intersect with Paul’s own understanding. Thus it becomes important to know the concept of time that we have been handed in a theological sense, before moving to then ask, what can a closer reading of Paul tell us about his concept of time. Much of the earlier chapters deal with our modern conceptions, followiing the philosphical and theological development of time, with are correlated. This would include the Western conceptions of “linear” time (or history), and the theological debates around circular conceptions of time, both which assume time as an entity seperated or intertwined with the concept of space. She speaks about William James’ classic conception, which sees time as inherently attached to tenses- “that what is past, to be known as past, must be known with what is present, and during the ‘present’ spot of time.” And further, “time “can only be coming from the future, passing through the present and going into the past… it is coming out of what does not yet exist, passing through what has no duration, and moving into what no longer exists.”
Eternity then, in theological and philosphical senses (and even scientific), is seen to contrast time by being wholly present without tenses (or, the impossible to comprehend notion of infinite progression, which carries with it the notion of change).
If we begin to narrow this down to a theological concern, what arises is the oft debated idea of salvation history. How God acts in and/or outside of time. Which of course is filled with all manners of debate regarding the nature of God and the nature of humanity, travelling lines between historical and apocalyptic viewpoints.
One of the biggest implications of the overlap of ages view for Jervis, and why she believes rethinking Paul’s viewpoint is necessary, is the question of the aim or goal of salvation. “The perhaps unintended consequence of this view is that Paul is seen to regard the new age as God’s salvific goal, with Christ as the means by which that goal is achieved. Now, as a consequence of Christ’s resurrection, the goal of the new age is here in part, though it must contend with the ongoing old age. However, when Christ returns and believers are raised, all will be as it should be: the old age will finally be obliterated and the new age achieved in its fullness. To the contrary, my reading of the evidence sees that Paul regarded not the new age but life in and with Christ as God’s goal for humanity. Paul connects certain concepts with that life (those that have been proposed as his language for “new age”) but makes clear that new creation, kingdom, and eternal life are the consequences and conditions of life with Christ.”
This might sound initially like semantics, and it partly is. One critique that could be lobbied at Jervis’ conclusions, along with pushing back on the notion that the overlap of ages isn’t compatible with Paul, is that much of what she says will find some familiarity in most Christian thought. However, I think the challenge for readers is to note where and how the nuances of Paul’s view of time not only challenge our own, but shift our theological concpetions, if ever so slightly. Even small shifts in thought can have iimportant implications, and I do think its fair to consider whether her obersavations of time and Paul change how we look at the person and work of Jesus (through the lens of Paul and his Jewish understanding).
After all, I do think it is true that many shcolars and theologians simply bypass the muddled ways we have of trying to make sense of the idea that Jesus both accomplished something AND sin and death appear to remain prevelant in our experience of this present reality (often called, this present age). This does represent a complicated reality that is not easy to address in a way that makes sense. Not that Jervis’ approach gets rid of the complications, but she does offer what is perhaps a way of giving the non-sensical a more logical framework. For Jervis, “Paul portrays believers as living entirely in Christ.” And what is the implication of this? She notes that Christ’s life is temporal, meaning, it exists in time. But it is a kind of time that exists in opposition to Death time. If one is in Christ, time does not end. And this is different than contrasting an old (or present) age with a new age in a couple ways. First, as was mentioned, it shifts the goal from new creation to life in Chirst. What flows from life in Christ IS new creation. Second, it shifts the common understanding that something changes upon Christ’s return more firmly and uniformly towards the idea that the change happened at Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jervis makes the case in later chapters that for those “in Christ”, time does not change upon Christ’s return, nor do they change. Rather we simply continue in a kind of time (life time) which is experienced in Christ. What does change upon Christ’s return, with the debate around God’s judgement aside, are those who are not “in Christ”.
Jervis also spends time unpacking how it is that life time in Christ can be temporal while also being uniformly past, present and future. At its heart, she is trying to retain the concept of time that she finds in Paul which relates to change and motion, two aspects of time which she accepts and assumes. As she writes, “One manifestation of the constant of time’s being tied to action, event, and change is that humans can experience (perhaps typically do experience) the tenses of past, present, and future simultaneously, rather than sequentially… The present of past things is the memory; the present of present things is direct perception; and the present of future things is expectation.”
Further, she writes, “The nature of God’s duration is not eternal timelessness and non-change. Rather, Paul’s letters indicate that he understood the eternal God to live a temporal existence in which there is past, present, and future, though for God these tenses are nonsequential…. The apostle understands there to be a primarily qualitative distinction: God lives a type of time that is life-time, not only because it does not end but, intrinsically related to its infinity, because there is in God’s time only life.”
This underscores the essential connection that drives her thesis- time is not related so much to space (although it can and might be) as it is to life. “God’s being is life”; “life [is] the fundamental element in the divine being…. Eternity is really beginning, really middle, and really end because it is really the living God. There really is in it, then, direction, and a direction which is irreversible… God’s tenses do not function chronologically. God’s past, present, and future are not sequential or discrete. The past and future are always in the present for God.”
Time, thus, can appear both finitely (death time) and infinitely (life time). And it is, in fact, in death time where time faces its biggest problems- “There is flatness and finitude to time over which death rules, in effect making this temporality an illusion”- something that moves us towards a natural conception of time that is infinite. Even those who deny God’s existence strive to hold on to non-sensicle conceptions of infinite time, because once we lose that all we have is death. Which of course means the absence of time.
This does ultimately bring us to the biggest question of all- what does it look like for us to live and experience life time in the here and now? If there is a qualitative difference between these two kinds of time, and we don’t ultimately shift from one to the other in an ambiguously applied “overlap of the ages”, how can we say that we are living life time in a world governed by death time?
Here is one way Jervis has of speaking to that quesiton; “The ethical and perhaps ontological consequence of living Christ’s time by virtue of belonging to him is that those who do so have crucified the flesh. Defeat of the flesh can take place only in a type of time from which death—that anti-God entity that empowers sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:2–9)—has been excluded. Paul, then, conceived of two types of time: one that is dominated by death and another that is only life, for death has no power in it. Those united with Christ live his temporality—a type of time from which death is excluded.
Living life-time with mortal bodies is not an indication of living in the overlap of the ages or in an already–not yet existence. Paul identifies sin as the reason believers’ bodies die, but he claims that nevertheless their bodies are united with Christ and God’s spirit (Rom. 8:9–11). The exalted Christ lives in believers, which means that though their bodies are dead, they will live (8:10–11). Those in Christ are granted the liberty of working with and living with the spirit and Christ, which means having power over the deeds of the body (presumably deeds directed by sin). Their lives, even with mortal bodies, are structured by life. They live in a type of time from which death’s power has been exorcised. They live not in a mixture or overlap of two ages but in the one time of the risen and exalted Jesus Christ. This makes it possible for them, by means of the spirit, to kill the deeds of the body (8:13).”
For Jervis, “Christ’s resurrection, though an event in Christ’s and humanity’s past, is present for those living after that event.” She believes it is similar, for Paul, when it comes to Christ’s crucifixion. “In the context of Paul’s union-with-Christ concept, imitation is the reproduction of the living and present Christ. Believers can, then, have the same disposition as Christ (Phil. 2:5).” To this end, perhaps one of the more striking things she points out is this. “Given the wonders that the eschatological events will achieve for believers, and for creation (Rom. 8:19–23), it is not surprising that we should miss that the apostle thinks that Christ’s parousia is primarily about Christ… The parousia is an event in Christ’s life, in Christ’s future. It is Christ’s day.”
This is perhaps the biggest point I’ve been dwelling over, as it is a powerful one. Precisely when she goes on to flesh that out in the followiing way; “Unlike Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation, Christ’s actions at his day/parousia, except for his ultimate subjection to God, do not signal temporal change from before to after… Christ’s day/parousia and his judgment do not change his existence, apart from opening it up. What is still to come for Christ is that his present tense will be revealed.”
Apply this to our imitation “in Christ”, and you have the following: “That Paul thinks that now those united with Christ can and should walk as in the day (Rom. 13:12–13) indicates that at the event of the day they will continue to live in it. Christ’s day does not change believers’ connection to Christ. Paul’s statement that believers are of and belong to the day (1 Thess. 5:5, 8) illuminates his understanding that believers remain in the day at the event of the day… Paul is not concerned to problematize death, as de Boer proposes, but rather to problematize Christ’s resurrection. The apostle wants the deniers to see the scope of the significance of Christ’s resurrection. It has not just defeated the power of sin, which the Corinthians appear to value (1 Cor. 15:17). Paul wants them to understand that Christ’s resurrection has made death so ineffective that dying is merely entry into life in incorruptible bodies (15:35–38, 42–44)… the power of death is not an obstacle to believers receiving the fullness of their salvation (imperishable bodies). Being in Christ is being in the one who has conquered death. Mortal believers live in Christ’s present reality… Believers do not await salvation from death at Christ’s parousia. They await, as Paul puts it in Romans, the redemption of their bodies (Rom. 8:23)28 or, as in Philippians, the transformation of humble bodies into the form of Christ’s body of glory (Phil. 3:21)… Death’s entrance into the world through sin (Rom. 5:12) is a problem that is solved through Christ’s entrance into the world. Justification, which comes through Christ (5:1), is in effect the defeat of sin. And where sin is defeated, so is death… The destruction of Death happens for believers when they are united with the exalted Christ.”
If this all sounds like heady stuff, it is. And Jaervis is up to the task of giving it the necessary work and exposition. These ideas are all fleshed out scripturally as well as historically and theologically. And it is all concerned for reshaping our sense of hope not on some awaited future, but on claims we can apply to the here and now.
“At the point of union with Christ, believers no longer live death-time but life-time; at the point of union, while living in mortal bodies, believers are already free of Death. In Christ’s time, the death of believers’ bodies is not fatal; their mortality becomes enveloped in and suffused by life. Those united with Christ are, like Christ, liberated from Death. Even before their bodily transformation, there is no death-time in the temporality of those united with Christ…. In Christ, dying has a meaning entirely different from that in the present evil age. In the present age, death is caused by the powers of Sin and Death (Rom. 5:12). On the other hand, in Christ—over whom Death does not rule (6:9)—dying is a transformative event.”
Thus the implications are personal- “Paul does not see “the Flesh,”25 or Sin, as the problem after people are united with Christ. It is rather believers’ perceptions of their relationship to Sin and its influence on the flesh that is the problem.”
And the implications are socially concerned as wrestling against sin means looking outwards beyond ourselves in the present- “Believers, however, are entirely capable of keeping defeated Sin in its impotent, excluded position. Such activity on believers’ part is not engagement in an ongoing battle for victory but enactment of their freedom and demonstration of Sin’s powerlessness. Union with Christ allows for avoidance of sinning. Put another way, believers wrestle against sinning not in spite of being in Christ but because of being in Christ.”
And it is cosmic- “Paul indeed conceived of a cosmic war between God and inimical powers, but the apostle is convinced that, through Christ’s cross, resurrection, and exaltation, God won that war.”
Thus the problem can be boiled down to one of knowlege- “The contest between true and false knowledge is not at once a contest between God and Satan; instead, it is a contest between those who accept their liberation and are obedient to Christ’s rule and those who resist the consequences of their liberation.”
Even if we can find threads of these modes of thoughts littered through common theological conceptionns, for me it breathed new and fresh nuance into what has been firmly entrenched theological ideas.
Reading Journal 2024: My Selma: True Stories of a Southern Childhood at the Height of the Civil Rights Movement Author: Willie Mae Brown
There are qualities that make this book compelling, and qualities that act as a deterrent. Beginning, perhaps, with the choice of perspective. This is a Memoir, and it is mostly told through the eyes of a young, 11-12 year old Willie Mae Brown growing up in Selma at the height of its racial tensions and the famous march. She writes as an adult, but it captures her perspective as a child, creating a bit of a rift between the two vantage points gjven the limitations of that childhood perspective. That perspective is true, of course, to what she saw and experienced, but the book is not intended to function as a studied examination of that perspective. She is not looking to impose things on to that childhood perspective that she wouldn’t have understood or seen at the time. It is meant to put us in her shoes, to see things from that limited vantage point. Which has its merits and its obstacles, especially where the adult voice does break through.
It should be said, if the subtitle of the book suggests “stories”, the chapters are all sequentially connected In a way that reads as a singular story. At the same time, each chapter retains its own distinctiveness, so as to stand apart. This does create a bit of dissonance, and at times it’s hard to follow, which subsequently makes me wonder if this might struggle to land for the younger readers that represent its primary demographic.
As a portrait of a single, authentic childhood, growing up as a young black girl coming of age into womanhood during a volatile time in Selma (which she sees more at a distance rather than as a participant) the book does work, and it’s on this level that the prose proves endearing. When I was able to fully resist placing any external demands on the authors approach, I found that’s when it was most able to speak, content to simply take us inside the inner workings of a world that existed within the conflict unfolding around it, both in its normalcy and in its particularities.
Reading Journal 2024: The Beatitudes: Living In Sync With The Reign of God Author: Darrell Johnson
“On first reading [the Sermon on the Mount] you feel that it turns everything upside down, but the second time you read it you discover that it turns everything right side up. The first time you read it you feel that it is impossible; the second time, you feel that nothing else is possible.”
An easy read that affords readers a significant window into a familiar text. Johnson’s approach is a bit paradigm shifting, and there are places and points where I remain unsure about some of his assertions, but he nevertheless offers an intriguing way to read the beatitudes in light of some long standing disparities and disagreements, most of which revolve around the the theoretical differences between Matthew’s addition of the Spirit and the, at least by appearances, more socially concerned nature of Luke’s summation of the same teaching.
To start, Johnson alludes to the larger paradigm through which he sees the Beatitudes to be operating- the kingdom of God having arrived in Jesus. It is here, then, that he pushes back against certain normative readings which want to see the Beatitudes as saying, do this and you WILL inherit the kingdom of God. Rather, he sees the Beatitudes as the outcome of participating IN the Kingdom. The beatitudes don’t exist as a set of requirements we must meet in order to be saved, they exist as part of the proclamation that Jesus has in fact done a saving work in bringing about the promised kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. And these beatitudes are expressions or markers of the character of this kingdom. “Makarios (blessing) does not refer to how you and I assess ourselves or our condition; makarios refers to how God assesses us and our condition.”
It’s not, do this and be blessed, it is blessed are those BECAUSE this is the character of the kingdom of God in Jesus. As Johnson notes, “if we separate His Beatitudes from the context in which He first spoke them, His words, meant to give life, become either frustrating idealism or oppressive legalism.” Words that are actually, meant to imply freedom and liberation.
If, indeed, “He speaks His Beatitudes in the context of gospel,” and if it is true that the call to repentance, or turning around and moving in a different direction, that proceeds from the Gospels proclamation emerges from the following: “The gospel according to Jesus is the announcement of a great fact that impacts all other facts. The gospel according to Jesus is that in Him, and because of Him, history has reached a major crisis point—“The time is fulfilled.” We are now passing from one era into a whole new era. The gospel according to Jesus is that in Him, and because of Him, the long-awaited, glorious, re-creating reign of God is invading the world.”
Then, “The clearest sign that human beings are in fact “turning around and believing” is that they are becoming “Beatitude people.” The clearest sign that human beings are in fact making a U-turn and embracing Jesus and His gospel is that they are becoming “blessed-are people.”
The other aspect Johnson challenges is the notion that the Beatitudes are describing different kinds of peope. “Jesus is not describing eight different persons, but is describing eight different qualities of the same person.”
Further, and this is what he will flesh out in the rest of the book as he walks through each beatitude, “one Beatitude flows into the next.” He sees in the construction of the Beatitudes a clear, literary design, anchored on one side by the “poor in spirit”, and the proclamation of the promised kingdom of God on the other.
Meaning, if you have one then you have them all, as each one is predicated on the other by their nature. One of the reasons he insists on this reading is because, any other approach creates division and turns things like poverty into virtues. More than that, the minute we seprrate them is the minute we find ourselves stumbling over the disparate nature that a descriptive like poor and a qualification like meekness or pure in heart creates. Rather, he says that poor means the same thing in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospel, underscoring this simple truth about the beatitudes- the proclamation of the kingdom breaking in begins with the truth that there is an enslaved creation this kingdom needs to break in to. We live in a world enslaved to Sin and Death, therefore we need Jesus to liberate it from this enslavement. Poor (in spirit), a phrase that denotes a lack of something, or a position defined by a lack of something, must be the natural starting point for the blessed life to take root. Blessings emerge not because of the poverty but in response to it. Which allows us then to mourn, not because mourning is a virtue, but because the blessing shines a light on the current state of things. Which creates meekness (or gentleness), a hunger and thirst for what is wrong to be made right, which flows through mercy and the pure of heart. All things which ultimately represent the upside down nature of the kingdom, which faces resistance from that which oppresses the world, a resistance ultimately layed powerless by Jesus.
In the beatitudes we find the great evangelical Word that the Gospel brings to all people in all times- the kingdom has arrived, therefore the blessed (right side up) life is now, even in the midst of the poverty it is responding to.
This does afford the beatitudes a nice narrative punch. And it seems to make sense, even if it feels like some elements of this reading don’t quite feel convincing (certainly when it comes to bringing a social context into the picture). I feel like one reading that makes sense to me is paralleling the beatitudes with the ten commandments, which has a natural break in terms of the two sumations- love God and love others. Johnson’s approach has definitely challenged my own percieved paradigms, though, and that’s certainly what one would hope for from any worthwhile read.
The Stories of my Life 