We will continue to base the devotions on “God for a Secular Culture” by Jurgen Moltmann.
This week we will look at how we apply a principle like ‘unity in division and division in unity’ to the knowing of other people, other things, and the Wholly Other God.
Applied to God, dialectical thinking leads to the recognition of diversity in community. ‘God is only known by God,’ says the ‘likeness’ principle. Dialectical thinking says that God appears as God only in the sphere of what is other than God, that is to say, in the realm of the finite and in the sphere of human beings who are in contradiction to him; dialectical thinking says that for human beings God is the Wholly Other.
God becomes available to us by being with us and not distant. In that availability we come to know our God and our God becomes fully aware of what it is to be creature. The Good News is impossible to trust because it is so foreign to us…and yet, we say that God becomes for us the power that draws us into some understanding of the way God rules…by grace alone. If God was like us, there would be conditional grace…which is no grace at all.
Connection: Sometimes it is a weird exercise to simply try and imagine what Jesus would be like in our shoes. How would God be revealed in us…knowing that we, at all times, complete turn to our own way of being.
Lord, keep us attentive to your power for new life that is always pulling us beyond ourselves and into the vision of life that you set before us in Christ, Jesus. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment