Joe Burnham > Recent Status Updates

Most of the time I read a men’s book and walk away thinking, “Damn, I just fuck everything up!” This one is just the opposite. I feel convicted about ways I can adapt, but I don’t feel like a fuck up. Rather, I see how biology guides some of my responses and how simple changes in relationship patterns would have made a huge difference. Maybe I’m not so bad at this relationship thing.

“A Conscious Man has learned to ask himself two centrally important questions. When he asks, ‘Who am I?” he withdraws from the world to discover who he is on his own terms. When he asks, ‘Why am I here?” he sets back out into the world to discover what he has to give. The balance of these two creates a context of dignity and purpose.”

As Americans “we have a misleading idea at the very head of our Constitution: the pursuit of happiness. One can not pursue happiness; if [one] does [one] obscures it. If [one] will proceed with the human task of life, the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality to something greater outside itself, happiness will be the outcome.”

“Modern western man has some basic misconceptions about the nature of happiness. The origin of the word is instructive: happiness stems from the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens.”

How different is this from all the talk about opening up the economy so people can once again find meaning and purpose.

“Fate spends much time bringing a man up from his depression or down from his infatuation. It is this ground level which the ancient Chinese called the Tao, the middle way. It is here that the Grail exists and happiness worthy of the name can be found.”

As an interesting aside, Logos or Word (John 1) is translated Tao in Chinese Bibles.

“If there is such a thing as psychological blasphemy, it is to take what is sacred and try to convert it to something else; it is to try to make the sacred into grist for the ego’s mill. Psychological sin does not consist in sex nor in being physical nor in ‘immorality’ but rather in calling a thing other than what it really is, in pretending to do one thing while doing another.”

“The sacred is always there, closer to us than any physical person could be, but it takes on the power to fill our lives with meaning and quality only when we open our eyes and bow down in awe.”

“This is the unhealed split within man that he projects onto outer woman, the war he fights at her expense.”

This section of the book is gutting me. I have embodied this for so long in ways that are both depraved and from an attempt at nobility. But however I’ve done it, “she” has always been collateral damage from my own inner war.

“At a certain level of our evolution, our relatedness to our soul and our relatedness to our human, personal world are in deadly conflict — and this conflict is the crucible of consciousness.”

Thinking about this through the lens of attachment theory and our attachment to ourself.

“This is why men and women put such impossible demands on each other in their relationships: We actually believe unconsciously that this mortal human being has the responsibility for making our lives whole, keeping us happy, making our lives meaningful, intense, and ecstatic!”

Yeah, been there. Guilty as charged. I think that’s the appeal of ongoing but casual ... it allows the illusion to stand longer.

“The fact that we say ‘romance’ when we mean ‘love’ shows us that underneath our language there is a psychological muddle... We are confusing two great psychological systems within us, and this has a devastating effect on our lives and our relationships.”

“If a man or woman clings to the dominant patriarchal attitude and refuses to make peace with the inner feminine, then she will demand tribute.”

I see this happening both internally (mental health, addiction, etc.) and externally (requests to pay for illusions of love or a sense of the feminine).

“When we grow wiser we learn that the disasters of life are often the genius of the unconscious, forcing our egos into a new experience of the self.”

Yet how often do we numb these invitations to explore and grow, choosing instead to settle back into the incomplete life we’ve always know?

“The declaration ‘Jesus is the Word,’ therefore, constitutes a theological statement concerning the significance of this historical life. In him, God’s revelation is disclosed and God’s power is operative.

“In destroying the old identity, Jesus replaces it with a new paradigm, a new center around which we can draw the fragmented strands of our lives into a single narrative. Now our lives make sense as we see that our sinful, alienated past has given way to the present enjoyment of fellowship and the anticipation of the fullness of life-in-community awaiting us in the future.”

“Had the Savior of humankind come as a woman, she would have been immediately dismissed solely on the basis of sex. Nor could her actions have been interpreted as counter cultural, for her self-sacrificing ministry would have been interpreted as merely the living out of her socialized ideal role.”

Ties back into a progressive God who is the power of the future.

Major problem with the book here. Christology needs to begin with the nature and work of the Universal Christ and then move on to how the Christ became incarnate in the man Jesus. Like so many, Grenz fails to keep the two distinct.

If the imago dei is both teleological and communal, then we see the Trinity in relationships that generate self-giving love (the fruit of the Spirit and the Kingdom of God) and the anti-Trinity in relationships that generate self-serving love (the fruit of this age).

“...at death God, who as Creator is the source of all life, reclaims the principle of life that he loaned to his creature. At death, the Creator withdraws the life principle from the creature.”

Profound section on how the adaptability of humanity also gives us no niche in the world. Therefore we find ourselves looking beyond the moment to find our meaning and purpose ... seems to me this is part of being made in the divine image.

This just rocked my world, “God is the power of the future... best conceived not as standing behind us or above us, but in front of us.” Like a parent inviting a child to crawl, then walk, then run, then ride a bike ... always inviting us forward. We are always called to move towards “God’s ultimate goal for creation.” I guess that makes God a Progressive.

With rare exception, chapter 2 on, The Triune God, is masterful and, perhaps, for the first time, I’m seeing the importance of the Trinity not as an ivory tower exercise, but as something that sets the definition for life in the Community of God.

I know from my attachment issues that this quote is true, not just in relationship with God, but also with other people: “The presence of sin (detachment) transforms the experience of divine love from the bliss intended by God into wrath.” Detachment makes love feel like wrath because those who are detached are wrathful.

“As Augustine noticed, the love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit, who is the eternal Spirit of the relationship between the Father and the Son.”

Discussion of formation in and by community is interesting.

The theological frame I grew up in and the community it formed ultimately brought about my spiritual deformation. That was the god I knew.

However, by reframing my conception of the God Jesus called Father and the seeking out of a new community, my life now bears evidence of an entirely different God.

Fantastic exploration on “knowing God as subject,” not object.

Just another moment where I’m discovering that, without having seriously read more than a few pages of Barth, I’m very Barthian in my theology. Trying to figure out if I picked that up from students of Barth or if it just happens that I’ve come to the same conclusions independently.

I have read a little Bonhoeffer, Hauerwas, and Pannenberg with Pannenberg guiding the direction of my dissertation. Hum?

“I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.” - Augustine

“When God’s [reign] is present - when God’s will is done - community emerges. Or viewed from the opposite direction, in the emergence of community, God’s [reign] is present and God’s will is accomplished.”

But it’s not just any community. It’s community organized around the rule and reign of God. Right? Or maybe that’s the only kind of true community? What are the values that make community?

Pointing to the Community of God over the Kingdom of God is convicting. I’ve been focused on the Kingdom, but not seeing it as something manifesting in the community. Instead of turned to a blend of individualism and politics as tools to manifest the Kingdom. Guess that means it’s time to fall in love with a Church I all too often hold in disdain.