In addition to my ongoing exploration of the question, "What is the good news," I also ask myself why do I still identify as a Christian when the title has such a bad reputation?
A couple things come to mind lately.
1. Because it's the symbolic system within which my values have been formed. And while I can appreciate the wisdom I find in other systems it feels absurd to pretend that I could replace the symbols that organize my imagination with a different cosmology. Similarly to say that I reject the cosmology completely is to imagine that I could surgically remove a motive from my brain.
2. The questions about meaning, epistemology, and motive that Jesus asks and lives are great questions. Not only could they occupy many life times of inquiry, they constantly push me back into my body to confront the light that shines through other bodies. This makes it impossible to live these questions and be deceived or be a bad person.
3. This point has more to do with why I'm still a Christian, but not a biblicist. I trust the experience of wrestling with parables and the parabolic life of Jesus more than the Christianity that manifests from systematic theology. Similarly, I trust poetry more than propositions, and invitation over coersion.
A couple things come to mind lately.
1. Because it's the symbolic system within which my values have been formed. And while I can appreciate the wisdom I find in other systems it feels absurd to pretend that I could replace the symbols that organize my imagination with a different cosmology. Similarly to say that I reject the cosmology completely is to imagine that I could surgically remove a motive from my brain.
2. The questions about meaning, epistemology, and motive that Jesus asks and lives are great questions. Not only could they occupy many life times of inquiry, they constantly push me back into my body to confront the light that shines through other bodies. This makes it impossible to live these questions and be deceived or be a bad person.
3. This point has more to do with why I'm still a Christian, but not a biblicist. I trust the experience of wrestling with parables and the parabolic life of Jesus more than the Christianity that manifests from systematic theology. Similarly, I trust poetry more than propositions, and invitation over coersion.
