Kindle Notes & Highlights
Theology matters. How we view Jesus matters. How we practice our faith, and with whom we practice it, matters.
In other words, the Gospel has to translate into good news for people in the here and now, in tangible ways that benefit humans.
Bonhoeffer’s heart changed when faced with the Gospel as considered from the vantage point of the poor and powerless worshipping on the margins of society.
Anyone can treat their in-groups with kindness. Even Nazis and their supporters brought each other casseroles when they were sick.
If theology doesn’t bring life to people and bring them into greater connection with the divine, then we need to rethink our theology.
Not only do we have the ability to imitate the external gestures and actions of others, but also to imitate others’ internal states. We’re especially adept at imitating the desires of others.
As the rivals contend for the desired object, the object itself (power, money and so on) becomes less important than dominating the rival (Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 145-146).
non-Christians were more likely than Christians to help Jews (Henry, 151).
The vast majority of people remained silent so as not to attract the attention of Nazi authorities. Even sympathetic people turned Jews away from their homes out of fear for their own lives or the lives of their families.
James Baldwin says, “I don’t suppose that … all the white people in Birmingham are monstrous people. But they’re mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself” (qtd. in Cone, 55).
Desmond Tutu writes, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality” (qtd. in R. Brown, 19).
reign and rule over them; he simply recounted his dreams.
Instead of wrestling against the injustice of being outed, coupled with the fear of having my personal life spewed all over the altar, that morning I surrendered, knowing that the company of Jesus and the saints would help me stand and testify. In fact, it felt like an honor.
It makes me sad to think that a group of believers drove me to beseech my right to exist in community as God created me. I asked them twice: “Will you accept me?”
Why must the oppressed plead for basic kindness?
The Bible became an idol for the Church, to whom we regularly sacrifice vulnerable people for the sake of keeping our god on its throne—slaves, women, divorcees. Now queers. When will we stop slaughtering our own children in order to uphold an ideology?
If the God I love and serve is not the author of violence but, instead, is its redeemer, I needed to contend with the sacrificial system of the Torah. I wanted to better understand the scapegoat and its role in our larger collective story.
But what if animal and human sacrifices are our invention, as Girard insists, and not God’s? And what if the God of Israel is actually in the business of slowly eliminating it?
Sacrifice is of human origins. God neither commands nor requests it; we have no reason to believe that he even welcomes it.
The scapegoat is innocent. The fact that the sins of a group are projected onto a scapegoat is almost always hidden in human scapegoating dynamics.
Humans killed Jesus, not God. Some members of both communities—Jew and Gentile alike, representing all humankind—executed Jesus.
Having lived through my experience of being scapegoated, this dynamic was perhaps the most surprising for me: the fact that victimizers view themselves as victims.
advocate.” Curious, isn’t it, that paraclete means “advocate” when the Hebrew word satan means “accuser”?
When we renounce our scapegoating ways—when we convert, so to speak—we move from operating in the spirit of the accusing mob to being infused with the spirit of the advocate, championing the vulnerable and oppressed.
The good news is that the dying does not define us; in fact, the dying portends new life and bountiful living.
When we step into living courageous, vulnerable, principled lives—protecting and advocating for the equal humanity of all people (including ourselves)—we find freedom, and peace becomes a possibility.
To which I replied: “I’m a 36-year-old woman. I waited a long time to find my mate, and it is not fair to ask me to put my personal life on hold any longer for the benefit of a church openly debating my relationship.
I find myself drawn to David S. Cunningham’s suggestion that we use the words Source, Wellspring, and Living Water to describe the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively.
the credal understanding of that bond is one in which the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father,” and therefore the Father did not exist before the Son and the Son is not subordinate to the Father (more specifically, they are mutually subordinate to each other, as well as to the Spirit).
Source, Wellspring, and Living Water paints a dynamic picture of a God bringing life to all in his/her purview.
This, then, becomes the invitation to all humans: to live in non-rivalry in every area of life.
This makes me think of the picture of "true self love" that CS Lewis gave in the Screwtape Letters. To love your own work, or someone else's work, equally simply because you love good work
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We open our hearts and minds to Jesus, allowing him to either reinforce or redirect our desires toward God’s—and we mimic those aspirations, instead of the passions of the mob.
Our hearts become shaped and formed in love, by love.
All of my discipleship, all of my serving throughout my life, all my ministry leading, my pastoring, all of my Scripture study, all of my overseas ministry work—it all boiled down to whether or not I’d learned to trust God when I most needed her. Did I know and trust Jesus enough to model his desires, as opposed to the many fluctuating, dehumanizing, self-serving, and chaotic desires swirling in people around me?
How do we learn to trust Jesus? We practice. And, even when you’ve found that you can trust God in most circumstances, you still need to practice. I still need to practice. This is part of our lifelong work.
When people speak up for and protect victims, dissension and disunity erupt.
There must be justice for true unity to exist. Otherwise, we pretend there is unity while, in reality, resentment abounds.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.
I do not see my pastoral role as gathering a group of people and doing everything in my power to keep those same people together forever, because doing so most often takes place at the expense of the most vulnerable in the group. My job is to protect everyone’s God-given gift to sit with everyone else in equal fellowship, and if some people at the table do not want certain groups to serve them, lead them, share the same silverware or cut the turkey, then (to be blunt) they have agency to leave the table.
We are welcome at God’s table so long as we welcome others.
“When we adopt a group identity and surround ourselves with similar in-group members, we essentially create our own alternate universe in which we believe that the standards, ideals, and goals of our in-group should become the “new normal”—not only for our specific group but for the entire larger group, including the out-group. Since we think that our way of doing things is the most normal, we interact with others while thinking that our alternate universal laws and way of life are the gold standard for the larger group. Essentially, we believe that we are the model citizens of the larger
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Forgiveness of others is expected of all Jesus followers; reconciliation, however, can remain elusive even while we hope and pray for it.
When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberators. We don’t forgive to help the other person. We don’t forgive for others. We forgive for ourselves. Forgiveness, in other words, is the best form of self-interest. This is true both spiritually and scientifically. (Tutu, 16)
It is not always beneficial for a victim to be reconciled to an oppressor if they have been abused.
In race relations in America, there will be no real reconciliation unless white people collectively say, “We have participated in—and benefited from—racist systems. We are sorry, and we will do our best to learn and repent. Please forgive us and allow us to return, in whatever ways we can, what we took from you.”
It should always be the job of the oppressors, and not the oppressed, to name their sin and repent.
If I convey that message, it becomes easier for scapegoating to take place again, because it seems there was no real harm done in the process.
As author Zora Neale Hurston aptly said, “If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
I, Emily Swan, have perpetuated sexism, homophobia, racism and classism because oppression is intertwined with our culture. We swim in injustice.
It strikes me that Jesus chose to keep his scars and not pretend like the crucifixion and all that came before it did not happen.
