Random Links 163

 Latifah Mat Zin: Reaffirming The Supremacy Of The Constitution

Issues relating to the Malaysian Constitution will not fade away so easily will it?

  Church

Pretty good from my young reflective friend ..

That Islamic State Issue

As I said earlier, it’s not going away anytime soon.

 Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Festschrift for Eberhard Jüngel 

I should at least try to read him someday when I’m free … for fun? 🙂

“More than any other theologian, Jüngel “placed God’s advent at the centre of his thought. Since God comes, we must speak of him and we can think him. Without God’s advent, there would be no faith, the Christian would have nothing to say, and Christian theology could not think any truth” (p. ix).

Although God comes always “from himself, to himself and through himself,” he nevertheless comes “to the world and to humans.” Indeed, God comes “as the mystery of the world by showing himself as the human God” (p. x). And this coming of God as the world’s mystery is by no means a “worldly necessity” – on the contrary, it is “more than necessary.” God’s coming “does not follow from any conditions inherent in the world, nor does it fulfil any preceding human needs” (p. x). In other words, God is neither merely possible nor necessary for the world – instead, he is actual, since he freely comes to the world. And because God comes to the world again and again, “we must always speak of him further, and we can never be done with thinking of him” (p. xi).”

A little Spanish theology, anyone?

I love this excerpt:

“The church has generally presented two perspectives on the Christian mission: on the one hand, there is a presentation of the gospel which only encompasses the spiritual dimension of the people; and on the other hand, a presentation with an almost exclusive focus on the social dimension. In the first perspective, it is thought that the church’s only mission is to save the individual souls of people and to make them useful for the internal work of the church. However, in this way the mission of the church excludes attention to the urgent tasks and responsibilities of society, as though the only thing of interest was the “spiritual life” of the people, and not their lives as flesh and blood people living in concrete society.

On the other hand, in the opposite understanding of the church’s mission, there is commitment only to the social liberation of people from structures of political, economic and cultural oppression. Certainly, the church cannot be absent from these struggles and from the denunciation of these forms of oppression, especially when dealing with sectors of society that are more vulnerable to abuse. However, history has shown, specifically in Latin America, that these struggles often run the risk of forgetting the specifically Christian discourse, with an almost exclusive focus on the instruments of mediation. Here, it is forgotten that the transformation of the human being can only happen from inside out – and this cannot be realized by any political or sociological theory, but only by the power of the gospel.

The way I see it, Christian discipleship has to do with concentric circles. First is the personal decision to follow Jesus, then this decision is expressed in communal life, and finally the community takes on its social responsibilities.”

 The stories we live by

 Thanks Jason for this. Interesting, it’s similar here in Kuala Lumpur – Busy, Tired, Passing Through are also the stories on many people’s conversations. Good closing questions:

“And any one seeking to do life together, mission in community, locally, faces these dominant stories that we order our lives around. How does the Gospel engage and challenge this monolithic stories, and set us free to live by a different story, and identity? And what are the stories that we order our lives around that you hear?”